Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 291 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, Julia Turner, and Jacob Weisberg with the audio player below.

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On this week’s episode, the critics discuss Stephen Colbert’s impending move to The Late Show, where he will replace David Letterman. Can another middle-aged white male reinvent late night? Next, the gabbers welcome Adam Begley to discuss his new biography of John Updike, and why we have trouble accepting a well-adjusted artist. And finally, the gabbers take a fieldtrip to the Guggenheim to view Italian Futurism 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe. Curator Vivien Greene guides the critics up the Guggenheim’s iconic ramp, describing the thrills and perils of representing a movement as diverse and paradoxical as Italian Futurism.*

Links to some of the things we discussed this week follow:

• The Colbert Report
• A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!
• Colbert and John Legend sing seductively about nutmeg
• Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
• The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, and the Network Battle for Late Night by Bill Carter
• The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy by Bill Carter
• Updike by Adam Begley
• Scott Stossel’s review of Updike in the Boston Globe
• Rabbit, Run
• Rabbit Redux
• Rabbit is Rich
• Rabbit at Rest
• The Complete Henry Bech
• Italian Futurism 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe at the Guggenheim
• Igor Stravinky’s “Feu d’artifice” (Fireworks)

Some of the Futurist art discussed is featured below:

Endorsements:

Jacob: The Library, a play directed by Stephen Soderbergh at the Public Theater, starring Chloë Grace Moretz.

Julia: “The Food Room,” Amy Schumer’s very funny video skewering Aaron Sorkin.

Steve: Robert Frost’s “Two Tramps in Mud Time,” a poem for an April day.

Outro: Colbert and John Legend singing seductively about nutmeg from A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!

You can email us at culturefest@slate.com.

This podcast was produced by Ann Heppermann. Our intern is Anna Shechtman.

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Correction, April 17, 2014: This post originally misspelled the first name of curator Vivien Greene.