Culture Gabfest

The Culture Gabfest “We Are a Sacred Troupe” Edition

Slate’s Culture Gabfest on The Death of Stalin, Rise, and the Twitter Demetricator.

Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 496 with Dana Stevens, Julia Turner, and Gabriel Roth with the audio player below.

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On this week’s Slate Plus, Dana, Julia, and Gabriel discuss pizza toppings.

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This week, the critics discuss the new Armando Iannucci film, The Death of Stalin, a black comedy about the power struggles in the USSR after Stalin’s death. How successfully does it walk the line between political horror and comedy? Next, they talk about the new television series Rise and wonder whether another series about a high school theater program can succeed so soon after Glee. Finally, the gabbers experiment with Ben Grosser’s Twitter Demetricator, which removes the likes, retweets, and follower data, to see what they can learn from a numbers-free social media experience.

Links to some of the things we discussed this week:

Endorsements:

Dana: Elena Ferrante’s column in the Guardian

Gabriel: There’s a Riot Going On by Yo La Tengo

Julia: The Moment app

Outro: “For You Too” by Yo La Tengo

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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