Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 337 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner with the audio player below. 

Subscribe in iTunes ∙ RSS feed ∙ Download ∙ Play in another tab

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

Go to slate.com/cultureplus to learn more about Slate Plus and join today. This week on Slate Plus: Is TV small talk ruining our dinner parties? The critics discuss Daniel Engber’s recent piece in Vulture.

On this week’s Slate Culture Gabfest, the gabbers discuss The Last Man on Earth: a new post-apocalyptic sitcom starring Will Forte. Can a show with this premise last longer than a couple of episodes? Next up, Karl Ove Knausgaard is writing a travel story for the New York Times Magazine. Is it an epic, Tocquevillian tour de force or a self-indulgent piece of stunt journalism? Finally, a picture of a white and gold (or was it black and blue?) dress broke the Internet last week, generating a worldwide existential crisis of perception. What made it such a viral phenomenon?

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

• The Lego Movie
• 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street
• Nebraska
• Flight of the Conchords
• 30 Rock
• “My Saga” by Karl Ove Knausgaard
• “Karl Ove Knausgaard Is the World’s Worst Travel Writer” by Katy Waldman in Slate
• Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle series
• Crime and Punishment
• Hamlet
• Slate’s comprehensive coverage of the dress
• Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz
• “How One Dress United the Internet” by Amanda Hess
• Seeing Things as They Are by John Searle

Endorsements:

Dana: Inside Star Trek: The Real Story by Herbert Solow and Robert Justman

Julia: “Living Like Weasels” by Annie Dillard in the book Teaching a Stone to Talk

Steve: “The Next Next Level” by Leon Neyfakh on n+1

Outro: “One” by Three Dog Night

You can email us at culturefest@slate.com.

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

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