Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 494 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner with the audio player below.
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On this week’s Slate Plus, Dana, Julia, and Stephen discuss their small superpowers.
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This week, the critics discuss the highlights of the 2018 Academy Awards, debating whether The Shape of Water was truly a safe choice for Best Picture and examining how Hollywood is still dealing with the #MeToo movement. Next, the crew unpacks the new movie Game Night. Is this comedy starring Rachel McAdams and Jason Bateman just stupid fun, or is there depth beneath the surface? Finally, Daniel Engber joins the gabbers to discuss his latest cover story for Slate about how we give the octopus too much credit, which raises the question: How do we decide which animals are morally OK to eat?
Links to some of the things we discussed this week:
- The complete list of 2018 Oscar winners
- “The Fish-Monster Sex Movie Was a Disappointingly Safe Choice for Best Picture” by Aisha Harris
- Willa Paskin’s review of this year’s Oscars show in Slate
- The Shape of Water
- Game Night trailer
- Sam Adams’ review of Game Night in Slate
- “Against the Octopus” by Daniel Engber
- Blue Planet II
Endorsements:
Dana: Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith, and Blue Planet II
Julia: The “Make Me Feel” music video by Janelle Monáe
Stephen: Tracey Thorn’s new album Record
Outro: “Queen” by Tracey Thorn
You can email us at culturefest@slate.com.
This podcast was produced by Benjamin Frisch. The production assistant is Daniel Schroeder.
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