Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 334 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner with the audio player below.

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This week on the Slate Culture Gabfest, the critics discuss the Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul. Can the show break new ground in Albuquerque’s underworld? Next up, Whiplash is Damien Chazelle’s Oscar-nominated thriller. Is tough love the best way to nourish talent? Finally, the critics weigh in on the ethics of HarperCollins’ decision to publish Harper Lee’s recently discovered manuscript, Go Set a Watchman.  

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

• Breaking Bad
• Dana’s review of Whiplash in Slate
• A profile of Harper Lee by Boris Kachka in New York
• An interview with Hugh Van Dusen, Harper Lee’s editor, in Vulture
• Ron Rosenbaum’s article in Slate about Vladimir Nabokov son’s choice to save his father’s incomplete final manuscript of The Original of Laura
• The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
• Bob Dylan’s MusiCares speech
• Andrew O’Hagan’s review of Fifty Shades of Grey in London Review of Books

Endorsements:

Dana: Bob Dylan’s new album, Shadows in the Night

Julia: Di Palo’s Guide to the Essential Foods of Italy: 100 Years of Wisdom and Stories From Behind the Counter

Steve: Attack on Titan, Death Note, and Andrew O’Hagan’s “I Am in Love With Poetry”

Outro: Bob Dylan, “Why Try to Change Me Now”

You can email us at culturefest@slate.com.

This podcast was produced by Ann Heppermann. Our intern is Lindsey Albracht.

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