STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
This week is a big anniversary for an American cultural institution.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
I assume you mean "Saturday Night Live"?
INSKEEP: Well, they had a 50th anniversary special, but The New Yorker magazine doubled that. They are 100, having started in 1925. They've got a lot of continuity editors and writers who've served for decades, including Francoise Mouly, who's been the art editor for 32 years. And so we called up and asked, why does The New Yorker have such distinctive covers?
FRANCOISE MOULY: Because it was started in the era where magazine was a prime visual medium, and the cover has been, for all of this time, a drawing done by an artist and signed by the artist.
FADEL: So real art?
INSKEEP: Yes, handmade oil paintings, watercolors, magic markers, cut paper.
MOULY: Most magazine covers tend to be a celebrity - a photo of a celebrity on the cover and a lot of, like, cover lines that explains to you what is inside and why you should pick up that magazine. The New Yorker has none of that.
INSKEEP: They just try to bring out a feeling.
MOULY: Ideally, makes you laugh or touches you emotionally. Gives you a sense of what's going on in the world, but not through words.
FADEL: I mean, that's what I really wait for. I wait for the cover...
INSKEEP: Yeah.
FADEL: ...To see what the commentary is. I'm sure they did something really special for the 100th-anniversary issue.
INSKEEP: Well, you can wait for six covers. Mouly says they riff on the iconic New Yorker mascot.
MOULY: It's a dandy looking with his monocle at a mere butterfly.
INSKEEP: The dandy - a little well-dressed, featured on the cover of the first issue one century ago.
MOULY: The dandy has a starch color, and he has an upturned nose. And he's wearing a top hat, and he is training his monocle on just little fluttering butterflies.
FADEL: So what does the dandy mean?
MOULY: An image of sophistication and making fun of itself at the same time. And that's something that we try to do every week to not take ourselves too seriously while still looking and scrutinizing the world with a distinctive monocle.
INSKEEP: We, too, scrutinize, but without the monocle. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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