A weekly conversation about what's new in The New Yorker: Burkhard Bilger talks about the rise of extreme beer; George Packer on what to look for in the next Administration, and whether the Internet's pro-Obama movement will continue to support him as President; John Lanchester on why derivatives are like modernist art and what his father, a banker, would have thought of what finance has become; Bruce McCall on his drawing for the Cartoon Issue, his artistic process, and his career; Kelefa Sanneh and David Denby on pleasures and perils of political impersonation; Malcolm Gladwell on genius and precocity; Pamela Colloff discusses George W. Bush and Crawford, Texas; Raffi Khatchadourian on illegal logging; Platon on photographing members of the military and their families; Adam Gopnik discusses the controversy behind Babar; Ariel Levy on Cindy McCain and the women of the 2008 election; Steve Coll on General David Petraeus; Nancy Franklin discusses the Beijing Olympics; the composer John Adams discusses his career; David Grann talks about the French con man Frederic Bourdin; Kelefa Sanneh discusses Tavis Smiley and the Obama candidacy; David Samuels talks about medical marijuana; Jill Lepore and Roger Angell discuss the battle over E. B. White's "Stuart Little"; Seymour M. Hersh talks about the Bush Administration's secret campaign against Iran; Atul Gawande on the science behind itching; Peter J. Boyer talks about the MSNBC host Keith Olbermann; Sasha Frere-Jones talks about Auto-Tune, a pitch-correction software program used in pop music; Paul Goldberger talks about the architecture of the Beijing Olympics; Ian Frazier talks about his experiences running a writers' workshop at a Chelsea soup kitchen; Sue Halpern talks about Virtual Iraq, a treatment for traumatized veterans; Margaret Talbot talks about the scientist Irene Pepperberg and her work with Alex the parrot; William Finnegan talks about the transnational networks of human trafficking and the efforts to help their victims; Burkhard Bilger talks about the history of field recording, and introduces samples from the folklorist Art Rosenbaum's recordings; Jonathan Franzen talks about his journey to China; Joan Acocella dissects "Dancing with the Stars"; Ben McGrath discusses Lenny Dykstra's efforts to broaden the horizons of retired athletes; Adam Gopnik talks about the future of magic and compares the magician's art to the writer's craft; Michael Chabon talks about the difficulties of dressing superheroes off the comic-book page, writing about clothes, and turning books into movies; Honor Moore talks about her father's public service and private life; Michael Specter talks about the possibility of using economics to change behavior and cut carbon emissions; George Packer talks about "Betrayed," a play he adapted from his New Yorker article of the same title; The New Yorker's art editor, Francoise Mouly, talks about the nearly three hundred submissions to the Eustace Tilley Contest; The New Yorker's poetry editor, Paul Muldoon, talks about rock and roll and the state of poetry; Steve Coll talks about the country's insurgency, the influence of the Taliban, and President Musharraf's changing role; Lawrence Wright talks about Mike McConnell, the director of National Intelligence, McConnell's ideas for reform, his views on privacy issues and torture, and the threats the intelligence community may confront in the future; David Denby talks about the director Otto Preminger and the films of 2007; Burkhard Bilger talks about the mysterious past and future of 211 Pearl Street, the man who tried to save the building, and preserving old New York.