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New York Times critic Dwight Garner says “The Slate Culture Gabfest is one of the highlights of my week.” The award-winning Culturefest features critics Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner debating the week in culture, from highbrow to pop. For more of Slate’s culture podcasts, check out the Slate Culture feed. Want more Culture Gabfest? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscrib ...
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On this week’s show, Isaac Butler (Supreme Friend of the Show and author of The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act) sits in for Dana. First, the panel is quite verbose about Say Nothing, a limited series that takes place over four generations and is set during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. By dramatizing the real-life events reco…
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On this week’s episode, the hosts tackle A Real Pain, writer-director Jesse Eisenberg’s tale of two cousins (played by himself and Kieran Culkin) who travel to Poland to honor their late grandmother and, in the process, come to understand their family’s history through a new lens. Then, the three drop into the lush, sumptuous world of Like Water f…
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On this week’s show, Extremely Musical Friend of the Pod (EMFOP) Chris Molanphy joins to memorialize pop’s Renaissance Man, Quincy Jones, who passed away on November 3, 2024. The legendary producer worked with every star under the sun, including Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and Chaka Khan, and created the best-selling album in history. (“Thriller…
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On this week’s show, Slate senior editor Rebecca Onion sits in for Julia Turner. First, the hosts examine Dahomey, an audacious new documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Mati Diop (Atlantics.) With a one hour, eight minute run time, Dahomey is an incredibly rich text in a very small package, and contemplates the repatriation of 26 royal treasures plu…
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On this week’s show, the panel falls for Anora, a new movie from writer-director Sean Baker (Tangerine, The Florida Project) that’s as arrestingly tender as it is sexy, funny, and unpredictable. The whirlwind Cinderella story won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year, and will likely become an Oscar frontrunner due to its star-making performances and …
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On this week’s show, Julia and Stephen are joined by Slate writer and senior editor, Sam Adams. Why do we tell fictional stories about real people? The panel ponders this question as they discuss two biopics: The Apprentice and Saturday Night. The Apprentice is an uncanny portrait of Donald Trump, a young striver under the tutelage – and spell – o…
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On this week’s show, Dana and Stephen are joined by Supreme Friend of the Podcast (SFOP) Isaac Butler, author of The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act. The trio first explores The Wild Robot, DreamWork Animation’s handcrafted, lovingly made film that’s the surprise of the year. Lupita Nyong’o voices ROZ, an old-fashioned robot powe…
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On this week’s show, the hosts are joined by a very special fourth panelist: Wesley Morris, a critic at The New York Times and the host of The Wonder of Stevie, a new podcast on Audible. First, the quartet explores The Substance, a lurid, monstrous body horror flick by writer-director Coralie Fargeat. Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, a fading…
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On this week’s show, two of our favorite Slate-sters, Nadira Goffe (culture writer) and Dan Kois (author of Hampton Heights), fill in for Dana Stevens and Stephen Metcalf. The trio first pays a visit to Gotham, and reviews Max’s The Penguin, an odd, unevenly paced mob show that doubles as DC Comics intellectual property. Sporting a prosthetic face…
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On this week’s show, the hosts begin by reviewing one of Netflix’s hottest movies at the moment, Rebel Ridge. Written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier, Rebel Ridge is a revenge thriller that tackles the very real issue of civil asset forfeiture. And while the film’s cleverness is up for debate, the panel agrees on one thing: the star of Rebel Ridge,…
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On this week’s show, the hosts revisit Beetlejuice (1988), the seminal film that marked Tim Burton’s arrival onto the scene as a sort of grim fairy tale teller. 36 years later, the director and much of the original cast return for its sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, a surprisingly sincere tale about the nature of death and grieving. Or, is it a to…
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On this week’s show, Slate’s books and culture columnist, Laura Miller, sits in for Julia. The panel begins with KAOS, Netflix’s new series that reimagines Greek mythology in modern times. Created by Charlie Covell (End of the F***ing World), KAOS stars Jeff Goldblum as Zeus, alongside a host of excellently cast deities. But is the show too self-sa…
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On this week’s show, the hosts begin by reviewing Bad Monkey, a breezy new crime drama on Apple TV+ starring Vince Vaughn as a former police officer turned health inspector. It’s everything a summer show should be: laid-back, easy on the eyes, and set in warm, sunny Florida. Then, speaking of returns, the panel turns back the clock and tackles Homi…
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On this week’s show, Rebecca Onion and Jenny Zhang fill in for Stephen. First, the panel tackles HBO’s Industry. The show is in its third season and has seen a huge increase in viewership. But is it a show worth of the coveted Sunday night timeslot? Then, they explore Alien: Romulus, a new addition to Xenomorph lore, with a controversial cameo. Fin…
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On this week’s show, June Thomas (author of A Place of Our Own: Six Spaces That Shaped Queer Women’s Culture) and Dan Kois (author of Hampton Heights) fill in for Dana and Stephen. First, the panel tackles It Ends With Us starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni (the latter also directed and produced the film.) It’s a big, glossy melodrama laced wi…
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On this week’s show, it’s the return of a Cultfest favorite: The Annual Summer Strut Episode! As per tradition, the panel is joined by Slate’s pop music critic and chart analyst (and host of the podcast Hit Parade) Chris Molanphy to celebrate his tenth (!!) year of Summer Strutting —before the four dive into their favorite picks from this year’s ma…
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On this week’s show, the panel is joined by Jamelle Bouie (New York Times Opinion columnist and Friend of the Pod) to discuss Deadpool & Wolverine, Marvel’s R-rated superhero flick starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman that’s dominating at the box office. Then the four assess the onslaught of Kamala Harris memes sweeping the internet right now an…
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On this week’s show, the panel gets swept up by Twisters, and begins by discussing director Lee Isaac Chung’s standalone sequel starring Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones. (For the record, the original 1996 disaster flick, Twister, is a near-perfect, Gabfest-approved comfort watch). Sure, Chung’s reboot isn’t as weird as the original, and the moder…
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On this week’s show, the panel begins by dissecting Longlegs, director Osgood Perkin’s viral horror movie starring Nicolas Cage that’s sweeping the box office. Aided by a clever marketing campaign, Longlegs is undoubtedly the summer’s “you gotta see it” horror flick, but does the Silence of the Lambs copycat live up to the hype? Then, the three jum…
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On this week’s show, June Thomas (co-host of Slate’s Working podcast and the author of A Place of Our Own) sits in for Julia Turner. The panel first explores The Bear, now in its third season, and questions whether Christopher Storer’s beast has become too self-aware. Then, they discuss Fancy Dance, a profoundly moving film by Native writer-directo…
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On this week’s show, Dan Kois (author of Vintage Contemporaries and the upcoming Hampton Heights) and Laura Miller (Slate’s books and culture columnist and author of The Magician’s Book) fill in for Julia and Dana. The panel is first joined by Carl Wilson, Slate’s music critic and the author of Let’s Talk About Love, to parse through I Am: Celine D…
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On this week’s show, Isaac Butler (co-host of Slate’s Working podcast and the author of The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act) sits in for Julia Turner. The panel first turns their attention to Ren Faire, HBO’s three-part documentary chronicling the surreal power struggle at the heart of America’s largest renaissance festival. Direct…
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On this week’s episode, the hosts excavate the psyche and begin by exploring Inside Out 2, a sophisticated children’s movie that tackles the question on every kid’s mind: How does one go about crafting a highly integrated ego? A bevy of new emotions join the motley crew living inside of our teenage protagonist Riley’s mind, most notably Anxiety, vo…
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On this week’s show, Dan Kois (writer at Slate and author of Hampton Heights: One Harrowing Night in the Most Haunted Neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) fills in for Dana Stevens. The hosts begin by exploring the latest addition to the Star Wars canon, The Acolyte, created by Leslye Headland (Russian Doll). Amandla Sternberg and Lee Jung-jae lea…
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On this week’s show, the hosts begin by asking the question: What even is Garfield? Jim Davis’ overfed, Monday-hating (even though he’s jobless) cultural figure first appeared in comic strips in the late 1970s, and since then, has been surprisingly resilient, most recently conquering the summer box-office with The Garfield Movie. But who is Garfiel…
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On this week’s show, the hosts begin by jumping into Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, a prequel to George Miller’s 2015 Fury Road, in which Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Furiosa, an arachnid beauty who’s stolen as a child and becomes a wasteland road warrior. She’s a “strong, silent type,” typical of the action film genre, but does that trope mean something dif…
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On this week’s show, the hosts begin by reviewing Babes, Pamela Adlon’s (Better Things, Louie) directorial feature debut starring Ilana Glazer and Michelle Buteau. Through raunch-comedy and body horror, Babes explores childbirth and pregnancy through a refreshingly unromanticized lens, but does it succeed as a drama? Then, the three switch gears an…
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On this week’s show, the hosts begin by dissecting The Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, the fourth chapter in the Apes franchise. Set “many generations” in the future, the latest installment (directed by Wes Ball and starring Owen Teague) is an undeniably well-crafted summer blockbuster – but does it achieve the level of complexity and thought it…
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On this week’s show, the hosts begin by diving head-first into The Fall Guy, director David Leitch’s love letter to stunts and stunt people. It’s a rom-com starring action set pieces, in which stuntman Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) falls for his director and ex-flame, Jody (Emily Blunt). The film is very telling about the work that goes into making a…
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On this week’s show, the hosts begin by discussing Challengers, Luca Guadagnino’s sexy tennis flick in which Zendaya stars as Tashi Duncan, the muse and lover of two male players, Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor). It’s a smart but silly movie, one that paints a beautifully nested portrait of friendship and rivalry, and explores the comp…
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On this week’s episode, the panel is first joined by Slate’s music critic, Carl Wilson, to puzzle over The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift’s much-anticipated 11th studio album. Stuffed with 31 tracks, the two-part album is a departure from the billionaire pop star’s otherwise perfectly crafted oeuvre: it’s messy and drippy, and at times, ma…
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On this week’s show, Slate culture writer (and Very, Very Good Friend of the Show, a.k.a. VVGFOP) Nadira Goffe sits in for Dana Stevens. The three begin with Civil War, writer-director Alex Garland’s (Ex Machina, Annihilation, Men) dystopian travelog starring Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, and Wagner Moura that imagines a burned out, bombed out Amer…
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On this week’s show, the panel is first joined by Slate business and culture writer Nitish Pahwa to discuss Monkey Man, Dev Patel’s dazzling but muddled directorial debut. The ultra-violent action flick stars Patel as Kid, a young man who works his way into a secret brothel for the super rich, hell-bent on finding the police chief who murdered his …
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On this week’s show, the panel is first joined by Slate culture writer (and the Gabfest’s Senior Beyoncé Correspondent) Nadira Goffe to dissect Beyoncé’s latest album, Cowboy Carter. Released on March 29th, Cowboy Carter is a 27-track behemoth with a country soul, packed with archival footage and songs that span multiple genres. To call it a countr…
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On this week's show, Slate’s Dan Kois (author of Vintage Contemporaries, How to Be a Family, The World Only Spins Forward, and Facing Future) sits in for Julia Turner. The panel first begins with a reboot: In 1999, when Jon Stewart took over, rather indifferently, the helm of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, he changed the media landscape with his …
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On this week’s show, Slate culture writers Nadira Goffe and Dan Kois fill in for Julia and Stephen. First up, the panel dissects Love Lies Bleeding with What’s Next producer Madeline Ducharme. Writer-director Rose Glass’ second feature stars Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian as beefed up, star-crossed lovers, in a twisted and gory love story about t…
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On this week’s show, the panel is first joined by Mark Harris, cultural historian and the author of Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, to discuss the 96th Academy Awards: a fun, glitzy return to form filled with surprisingly political moments. Then, the three review FX’s Shōgun, a massive epic set in 17th cent…
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On this week’s show, the panel returns to Arrakis! First up, the trio reviews Dune: Part Two, the (as the title suggests) second part of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 science fiction epic. In it, Timothée Chalamet plays Paul Atreides, the supposed “messiah” of Arrakis, a hostile desert planet rich in spice, in a fantastic fe…
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On this week’s show, the panel is first joined by Wesley Morris, New York Times’ critic at large, to dissect This Is Me… Now: A Love Story, Jennifer Lopez’s bizarre, nutty, yet utterly delicious self-funded vanity project that cost the singer $20 million to produce. (Wesley wrote a brilliant piece about it for the Times.) Then, the three explore 20…
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On this week’s show, the panel begins by dissecting Mr. & Mrs. Smith, the episodic remake of Brangelina’s 2005 espionage film. The Prime Video series stars Donald Glover and Maya Erskine as the titular Smiths, spies who become “married” as a part of the job, and explores partnership in the gig economy in a quieter, smaller, and less glamorous versi…
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On this week’s show, the panel returns to 1985 and reviews The Greatest Night in Pop, Netflix’s star-studded documentary about how “We Are the World” (a charity single performed by USA for Africa, a supergroup comprised of the most popular artists not only of the time, but arguably, ever) came to be and the legendary night it was recorded. Although…
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On this week’s show, Extreme Friends of the Pod and co-authors of The World Only Spins Forward, Isaac Butler and Dan Kois, fill in for Dana Stevens and Julia Turner. The hosts begin by dissecting The Zone of Interest, filmmaker Jonathan Glazer’s audacious movie about the Holocaust that’s told through the lens of Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss and his …
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From our friends at Life and Art, a culture podcast of the Financial Times: This week, we return to an old comfort classic: the 2003 Nancy Meyers romcom Something’s Gotta Give, starring Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson. In it, two middle-aged people fall in love, but only after one heart attack, two younger lovers, some unexpected midnight pancakes …
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On this week’s show, Slate culture writer Nadira Goffe and Sam Sanders, host of Vibe Check fill in for Dana Stevens and Julia Turner. The hosts begin with a subversively brilliant Oscar contender, American Fiction, which is Cord Jefferson’s adaptation of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure. The filmmaker’s debut racked up five Oscar nominations, …
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On this week’s show, Jamelle Bouie (Opinion columnist at The New York Times) sits in for Julia Turner. The hosts first begin with a trip to Ennis, a fictional Alaskan town at the heart of True Detective: Night Country, and review the fourth installment of the HBO Max anthology series. There’s a new showrunner at the helm, Issa López, who brings a d…
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On this week’s show, Nadira Goffe sits in for Julia Turner. The hosts first begin by exploring an updated cult classic: Mean Girls, the movie musical version of the Broadway show based on the iconic 2004 film. The 2024 iteration stars Reneé Rapp as Regina George and Angourie Rice as Cady Heron. Then the three head to 17th century Edo-era Japan and …
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On this week’s show, the hosts are first joined by Slate’s Heather Schwedel to discuss Anyone But You, a paper-thin adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, whose combined good looks and star wattage aren’t enough to save the flimsily written rom-com. (Although, despite the film’s rocky start, it’…
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On this week’s show, the hosts begin by jumping into the fantastical world of Wonka, a prequel to Roald Dahl’s enduring novel that explores the origins of its famously impish character, Willy Wonka, portrayed here by a wide-eyed, sugary sweet Timothée Chalamet. The musical film, directed by Paul King (Paddington, Paddington 2) isn’t the kind of mov…
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This week, we revisit one of our favorite episodes of 2023! The panel begins by examining Barbie, Greta Gerwig’s hot pink, record-breaking movie about the iconic Mattel doll. Then, the trio dives into Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which chronicles the life of the “Father of the Atomic Bomb,” and explores whether the film achieves its aims. Final…
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This week, it’s the yearly call-in episode! Steve, Dana, and Julia dive into questions submitted by Culture Gabfest listeners. Outro music: “Forbidden Love” by OTE Podcast production by Cameron Drews. Production assistance by Kat Hong. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience ac…
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