Cannonball with Wesley Morris

While the “Cannonball” team is on a short break, Wesley is recommending some notable conversations he’s listened to lately from other New York Times shows. This week, it’s an episode of “Modern Love,” featuring host Anna Martin talking with Zendaya and Robert Pattinson. They dig into the complicated relationship at the core of their new film, “The Drama,” and consider how much they actually want to know about their real-life romant...

Seven years after Toni Morrison’s death, we’re experiencing what the critic Parul Sehgal describes as a “wave of Morrisonia.” Eleven of her novels are being reissued by her publisher. There’s a new book of criticism about her novels. You can feel the effort to shore up her legacy.

It’s an understandable impulse. This is the woman who wrote “Beloved,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that, as Parul writes, “invented a language for u...

“We’re living in protest-y times! Where are all the protest songs?”

That was a question that Wesley Morris was asking in the time leading up to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl LX halftime show. He thinks the scarcity of direct protest art in this moment contributed to the intense speculation and anticipation about what Bad Bunny would do on that stage. Would it be a protest? And if so, what kind of protest?

Well, now the show’s over. So what ...

“Marty Supreme” is a box office and critical hit. The film just received nominations in many of the most coveted Oscar categories — best picture, director and actor. And Wesley is glad about all of it. He loved the movie and its shameless protagonist, Marty Mauser.

But it turns out that a lot of people going to see this movie don’t share his feelings. In fact, a lot of them hate it. And much of that seems to have to do with a hatred...

Cannonball is taking a short break and will be back very soon. In the meantime, listen to this special conversation:

Last November, Wesley spent an evening with Michelle Obama to celebrate the release of “The Look,” her new book about fashion and the power of style. It’s a heavy text – weighing in at about 4.12 pounds (Wesley checked). That makes it great for coffee tables. But it also reflects the weight of what it meant to Michell...

Wesley has a practice as a new year begins of saying goodbye to those who won’t be coming with us. He could have easily done an episode on any number of household names. He could have done the same with people who weren’t the biggest names, yet still loomed large for many.

But out of all the artists who passed in 2025, Wesley decides to dedicate time to Roberta Flack.

The critic and scholar Daphne A. Brooks, a friend of Wesley’s, joi...

When a book publisher asked Wesley to write an introduction for a new edition of “The Great Gatsby,” he was confused. So many people had already written about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel since it was first published in 1925. What could he add? And why him?

But eventually, he realized he does in fact have a special relationship with this book. He has read it in three different phases of life, and each time, it seemed profound in an e...

On today’s show, Wesley reveals his favorite film performances of the year — but his list is not an ordinary best-of list. He zeroes in on the specific details that make a performance great. Like, who did the best acting in a helmet this year? Who were the most convincing on-screen best friends? And who refused to play it safe? Find out in our first annual Cannonball Great Performers special.

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Cannonball is off this week for the holiday. But I wanted to share something with you from our friends over at The Interview. It’s a conversation that my colleague David Marchese had awhile back with one of our biggest stars, Eddie Murphy. I've been thinking about it recently because there's a new documentary about Murphy that just came out on Netflix -- and I highly recommend this conversation as a kind of companion listen over yo...

Netflix has a hit in “The Perfect Neighbor,” a documentary attracting a lot of attention for both its subject and its form. Using police camera footage, the film shows the events leading up to the killing of a Black mother of four by her white neighbor. It’s unquestionably powerful and difficult viewing. But for Wesley and his fellow Times critic Parul Sehgal, it raises all kinds of moral and ethical questions. What does it mean to...