The New Yorker Radio Hour

This week: A Manhattan bartender, prizefighter, and onetime bank robber returns to his ancestral mansion in Serbia; Michael Friedman brings us a new song written from the campaign trail; and a devastating play tackles rape culture.

This week, Father Michael Pfleger, a white priest on Chicago’s South Side, holds a funeral for a young man who threatened his life; Larry David applies his passive-aggression to Missed Connections listings; and the authors of a new book on autism discuss “patient zero,” an elderly man in Mississippi who was the first person ever to receive the diagnosis.

This week, two stories out of Baltimore: “The Wire” creator David Simon drives the city with Jelani Cobb, and David Remnick talks to the thirty-year-old mayoral candidate DeRay Mckesson. Also, Maria Bamford discusses mental illness and comedy, and the engineering evangelist Limor Fried tries to convince you—yes, you—to build some electronics.

This week, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Jeffrey Toobin revisit the O.J. Simpson trial, a songwriter hits the campaign trail, and the lifelong night owl Patricia Marx tries some gizmos to help her sleep.

The Oscar-winning documentarian Laura Poitras (“Citizenfour”) talks to David Remnick about her first solo museum exhibition, “Astro Noise,” which channels her investigations of government surveillance into immersive installation art. A group of jazz musicians recall how David Bowie found them in a hole-in-the-wall club and enlisted them to create “Blackstar.” And the poet Brenda Shaughnessy reads Hilton Als a poem about living in a loft full of lesbians, back when New Yorkers could still afford to smoke.

This week, stars of the stage, screen, and earbuds. Marc Maron tells Kelefa Sanneh why talking into a mic saved his life. The magazine’s TV critic, Emily Nussbaum, speaks with Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer about their raunchy and joyful TV comedy “Broad City.” And Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and star of “Hamilton,” takes comfort in knowing that dirty politics are as old as America.

In this episode, three epic battles: Jane Mayer recounts her experience investigating—and being investigated by—Koch Industries; Junot Díaz discusses his fraught relationship with his native Dominican Republic; and the undefeated boxer Heather Hardy prepares for a big fight at the Barclays Center. Finally, the astronomer who wrote “How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming” lays out his evidence for the existence of a ninth planet.

If Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug kingpin known as El Chapo, is extradited to the United States, he might face two formidable witnesses: identical twin brothers, former drug traffickers on a major scale, who gathered evidence against him for government prosecutors. Jack Handey tells some “Tales of Old Santa Fe,” where the cowboy past collides with the New Age present. And David Remnick talks with Alicia Garza, who co-founded Black Lives Matter, about the movement’s goals, and her issues with Hillary Clinton.

Sarah Koenig, the host of “Serial,” talks with David Remnick about why her podcast’s success caught her by surprise.  Robin Coste Lewis, who recently won a National Book Award, explains how a devastating injury damaged her brain, but aided her poetry. And Jelani Cobb goes back to his high school.

What's the funniest way to spook a horse? Cartoonists Matt Diffee and Emily Flake give us a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how jokes get made. Then, comedian Aziz Ansari critiques Hollywood’s casting habits. Journalist Rukmini Callimachi shares her insight into how ISIS views itself. And the screenwriter and director Charlie Kaufman talks puppet sex and existential dread during a tour of the Whitney Museum.