Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 379 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner
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This week on Slate Plus, Dana, Julia, and Steve answer a listener question about whether they meditate daily (or at all).
On this week’s Slate Culture Gabfest, the gabbers discuss Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Did the blockbusting juggernaut offer a new take on an old franchise and atone for the sins of the films from the early 2000s, or was it just tired nostalgia bait? Next up, the gabbers answer listener calls about everything from the state of podcasting to the representation of diverse voices in cultural criticism.
Links to some of the things we discussed this week:
- Forrest Wickman’s Slate piece about the ending of Star Wars: The Force Awakens
- Alias, which was created by J.J. Abrams
- Dana’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens review in Slate
- Rian Johnson’s Looper and Brick
- Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi which both have screenplays written by Lawrence Kasdan
- “80 Books No Woman Should Read” and “Men Explain Lolita to Me” by Rebecca Solnit
- The Culture Gabfest episode from earlier this year featuring Wesley Morris
- Master of None
- The podcast About Race: Our National Conversation About Conversations About Race by Baratunde Thurston, Raquel Cepeda, and Tanner Colby
- “Toward a Critical Theory of Podcasting” by Jonah Weiner on Slate
- You Must Remember This, the podcast about Hollywood’s forgotten history by Karina Longworth
- Start the Week, the BBC culture podcast
- Robert Elms, the podcast that discusses the culture, history, architecture, language, and geography of London
- The movie In Search of Zombieland
- Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting by John August and Craig Mazin
- A spate of some of the cultural products that Steve loved this year: Creed, Diary of a Teenage Girl,Jessica Jones, Master of None, Catastrophe, The Grinder, Magic Mike XXL
- “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Is Peak #PeakTV” by Willa Paskin on Slate
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And by Making a Murderer, an unprecedented new documentary that takes viewers inside a high-stakes criminal case where reputation is everything and things are never as they appear. All episodes are now streaming, only on Netflix.
Endorsements:
Dana: Any movie by Haskell Wexler, Wexler’s obituary in the New York Times, and Matthew Zoller Seitz’s interview with Wexler about Days of Heaven at Eberfest 2013
Julia: “At Señor Frog’s in Times Square, It’s Spring Break Forever” by Pete Wells in the New York Times
Steve: The podcast Limetown
Outro: “Main Title/Rebel Blockade Runner” by John Williams & London Symphony Orchestra from the album Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
You can email us at culturefest@slate.com.
This podcast was produced by Zack Dinerstein. Our intern is Lindsey Albracht.
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