Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 314 with Stephen Metcalf, Julia Turner, Carl Wilson, Seth Stevenson, and Willa Paskin with the audio player below.

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This week Slate Plus listeners will hear Julia and Steve answer a listener’s question about their shameful displeasures: the cultural touchstones they are supposed to like but just … don’t.  Go to slate.com/cultureplus to learn more about Slate Plus and join today.

We have exciting live shows coming up! On Oct. 8 we are coming to downtown Los Angeles. We’ll be joined by John August and Craig Mazin of the Scriptnotes podcast, plus a soon-to-be-announced special guest. Nota bene: Steve is scheming to bring some of the finest pie in upstate New York. Next up, the Oct. 20 Boston live show! Join us in Julia’s hometown.

And don’t forget you can find Culture Gabfest T-shirts for sale in the Slate store.

This week on the Slate Culture Gabfest, Julia and Steve are joined by three guests, in lieu of the irreplaceable Dana. Carl Wilson comes into the studio to talk about rockasaurs U2, whose new album you probably have, whether you like it or not. Do Bono and Co. have any credibility left? Next, Seth Stevenson recently reported on a huge upset in the world of competitive chess. What was this drama, exactly, and why wasn’t anybody else paying attention? Finally, Willa Paskin joins the gabbers to discuss Shonda Rhimes and explain why the New York Times’ use of the “angry black woman” stereotype to talk about her work was off-base, out of touch, and just plain wrong. 

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

• U2’s early single, “I Will Follow”
• Their albums Boy and War
• Carl Wilson’s review of Songs of Innocence on Spin
• Seth Stevenson reports on the recent chess tournament in St. Louis on Slate
• The chess of Bobby Fischer
• Alessandra Stanley’s offending profile of Shonda Rhimes
• Willa Paskin’s bullshit call on Slate
• Steve’s favorite show, Grey’s Anatomy
• Scandal
• Roots
• Emily Nussbaum on the race-blindness of Scandal
• The Help
• The Blind Side
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• To Kill a Mockingbird

Endorsements:

Willa: The third book in Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend trilogy, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

Julia: The app Citymapper

Steve: Garry Wills’ Reagan’s America: Innocents at Home

Outro: U2, “One”

You can email us at culturefest@slate.com.

This podcast was produced by Andy Bowers and Ann Heppermann. Our intern is Josephine Livingstone.

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