HOME /  Culture gabfest :  Slate's weekly roundtable.

The Culture Gabfest, "Warbly Strangly" Edition

Listen to Slate's show about the week in culture.

Posted Wednesday, March 3, 2010, at 10:23 AM ET

1_123125_2187915_080423_cgf_header

Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 76 with Stephen Metcalf, Jody Rosen, Dana Stevens and Julia Turnerby clicking the arrow on the audio player below:

You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe to the weekly Culture Gabfest podcast feed via iTunesor directly with our RSS feed.

Get your 14-day free trial from our sponsor Audible.com, which includes a credit for one free audiobook, here. (Audiobook of the week: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, written and narrated by Stephen King.)You'll find links to this and previous Culturefest recommendations on our Audible RSS feed.

Find the Culturefest Facebook page here. Leave us a note and see what other Culturefest listeners have to say about the latest podcast.And please help us with the Slate Podcast Pledge Drive—and give yourself a shot to win free movie tickets and a chance to endorse something you love on our show—by sending your Culturefest "conversion story" to culturefest@slate.com.

In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics Stephen Metcalf, Jody Rosen, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner discuss singer song-writer Joanna Newsom, the new NBC show The Marriage Ref, and the Guardian's collection of writers' rules for writing fiction.

Here are some links to the things we discussed this week:

Slate's review of Joanna Newsom's latest CD, Have One on Me, by Jonah Weiner.
Slate's review of Newsom's first CD, The Milk-Eyed Mender, by Jody Rosen.
The poems of Gerald Manley Hopkins.
The not-so-official site of the band Silver Jews.
NBC's The Marriage Refon Hulu.
Match Game on YouTube.
Full episodes of the ABC reality show Wife Swap.
Ten rules for writing fiction in the Guardian, Part 1 and Part 2.
John Keats' love letters to Fanny Brawne.

The Culture Gabfest weekly endorsements:

Dana's picks: Writer Will Leitch on Roger Ebert in Deadspinand the new video  from the band OK Go.
Julia's pick: Lucinda Williams' song "Words."
Stephen's pick: The two-disc set Rough Trade for Indie.

SINGLE PAGE
Page: 1 | 2
MYSLATE
MySlate is a new tool that you track your favorite parts Slate. You can follow authors and sections, track comment threads you're interested in, and more.

Stephen Metcalf is Slate's critic at large. He is working on a book about the 1980s.

Jody Rosen is Slate's music critic. He is the author of White Christmas: The Story of an American Song, and a frequent contributor to the New York Times and The Nation.

Dana Stevens is Slate's movie critic. Email her at slatemovies@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter.

Julia Turner is Slate's deputy editor and a regular on Slate's Culture Gabfest podcast. You can email her at juliaturneratslate@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/juliaturner.

Illustration by Robert Neubecker.