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This week on Slate Plus, the Gabfest’s departing producer, Ann Heppermann, joins the gabbers to discuss audio fiction, the Sarah Awards, and her podcast Serendipity.
On this week’s Slate Culture Gabfest, the critics discuss Amazon’s new pilot, I Love Dick, starring Griffin Dunne and Kathryn Hahn as passive-aggressive bickerers trapped in a hellish marriage, with Kevin Bacon as a charismatic intellectual who changes their lives. Does Jill Soloway’s latest creation live up to Transparent? Next up, GQ has given us an oral history of “We Built This City” by Starship, which just might be worst song of all time—but not all the gabbers agree. Chris Molanphy joins the debate about what makes a song historically bad and offers a few other candidates for the title of Worst Song of All Time. Finally, Hollywood has had a poor summer at the box office: Is this the end of movies as we know them?
Links to some of the things we discussed this week:
- Amazon’s pilot I Love Dick, based on the novel by Chris Kraus
- Transparent
- Slate’s Culture Gabfest on Transparent’s pilot in February 2014
- Willa Paskin’s review of I Love Dick
- Dangerous Liaisons
- “We Built This City“ by Starship
- “An Oral History of ‘We Built This City,’ the Worst Song of All Time” in GQ
- “Hollywood’s Summer of Extremes: Megahits, Superflops and Little Else” in the New York Times
Some contenders for Worst Song of All Time:
- “What’s Up“ by 4 Non Blondes
- “Who Let the Dogs Out” by Baha Men
- “We Are the World” by USA for Africa
- “Dear Mr. Jesus” by PowerSource
- “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel
- “Hotel California” by Eagles
- “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin
- “Wonderful Tonight” by Eric Clapton
- “All for Love” by Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart, Sting
- “Smooth” by Santana ft. Rob Thomas
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Endorsements
Dana: “Miracles” by Jefferson Starship and Ann’s fiction podcast Serendipity
Julia: “Cheap Thrills” by Sia ft. Sean Paul
Ann: @officebuddha’s peregrine falcons on Instagram, Grand Central Terminal’s historical slideshow, and the Slate Culture Gabfest
Stephen: I, Claudius by Robert Graves
Outro: “Runaway“ by Jefferson Starship
You can email us at culturefest@slate.com.
This podcast was produced by Ann Heppermann. Our intern is Lizzie Fison.
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