Cannonball with Wesley Morris

A list, according to The Times’s co-chief restaurant critic Ligaya Mishan, can be a way “to make sense of chaos” and to also “destabilize the current order.”

Her list of “the 100 Best Restaurants in New York City in 2026” takes that spirit to heart. A taco truck in Queens (Birria-Landia) serving $5 consommé sits alongside a Caribbean fine dining spot in Manhattan (Kabawa) with a $145 tasting menu. Ligaya makes a compelling argument...

The “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” ends this week. When CBS announced the show’s cancellation last summer, the network said in a statement that it was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.” There’s still some debate around what happened and why, but for Wesley Morris, the demise of the long-running franchise brought up feelings about another late-night show: “Saturday Night Live.” Maybe, after...

The public outrage was inevitable. The New York Times Magazine published a list of the 30 greatest living American songwriters. Two hundred and fifty music insiders submitted ballots. Six Times music critics and writers sorted through it all to get to 30.

For Wesley Morris, it was both daunting and thrilling. Luminaries like Bonnie Raitt, George Clinton, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Mariah Carey submitted ballots. How to honor those subm...

“Michael,” the new Michael Jackson biopic, knows what it’s doing. That’s clear from the opening shot: high-water pants and white socks pushed down to a pair of black penny loafers. It’s appealing to a very specific version of our memories of Michael Jackson. The version some of us prefer to hold onto. But in doing so, it avoids the truth.

Our qualms with the King of Pop? Forget about that. Be horrified by Joe Jackson’s abusive pare...

Wesley loves Zendaya. The actress caught his eye as the charming but drug addled Rue in HBO’s “Euphoria.” But he thinks Hollywood hasn’t cast her in roles worthy of her considerable gifts. So when Zendaya showed up in the movie “The Drama” as a young Black woman with a secret from her past that threatens to derail her engagement to Robert Pattinson’s character, Wesley was cautiously optimistic. Here were two of Hollywood’s finest i...

“Cannonball” is on its last week of spring break, so we’re sharing an episode of “Popcast” that features Jack Harlow discussing his pivot to R&B. In a viral clip from this episode, Harlow, a white musician, says, “I got Blacker.” Wesley was struck by Harlow's honesty and the questions raised by the full conversation. 

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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...