Slate’s Culture Gabfest on Orange Is the New Black, The Act of Killing, and the royal baby.

Is Orange Indeed the New Black? Slate’s Culture Gabfest Weighs In.

Is Orange Indeed the New Black? Slate’s Culture Gabfest Weighs In.

Slate's weekly roundtable.
July 24 2013 11:07 AM

The Culture Gabfest “The Duchess Has a Vagina” Edition

Slate's podcast about the new Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, the documentary The Act of Killing, and the royal baby.

The Culture Gabfest has moved! Find new episodes here.

Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 253 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, Julia Turner, and Simon Doonan with the audio player below

And join the lively conversation on the Culturefest Facebook page here:

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Culturefest is on the radio! Gabfest Radio combines Slate’s Culture and Political Gabfests in one show. Listen on Saturdays at 7 a.m. and Sundays at 6 p.m. on WNYC’s AM820.

On this week’s episode, our critics discuss the new Netflix original series Orange Is the New Black, which chronicles the 15 months one woman spent in federal prison and is based on Piper Kerman’s memoir of the same name. What does the show say about our obsession with fish-out-of-water middle-class characters caught in a world of crime? And does it continue Netflix’s promising track record of original programming? The gabbers then dissect the unsettling, gorgeous, and absolutely original new documentary The Act of Killing. The film follows several perpetrators of a mass killing of alleged communists in mid-1960s Indonesia as they stage re-enactments of their harrowing techniques and confront their own deeds in the process. Lastly, Simon Doonan joins to add a British perspective as the gabbers chat about the newborn royal baby and ask the key question: Who cares?

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

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Endorsements:

Dana: The new website, The Toast.

Julia: Mark Bittman’s recipe for “Pasta With Sardines, Bread Crumbs, and Capers,” for the New York Times.

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Stephen: The band Tamaryn.

Outro: "I'm Gone" by Tamaryn.

You can email us at culturefest@slate.com.

This podcast was produced by Dan Pashman. Our intern is Sam McDougle.

Follow us on Twitter. And please "like" the Culture Gabfest on Facebook.

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

Dana Stevens is Slate’s movie critic.

Julia Turner, the former editor in chief of Slate, is a regular on Slate’s Culture Gabfest podcast.