Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 513 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 debate the importance of reading a book before seeing the movie based on that book.
Go to Slate.com/cultureplus to learn more about Slate Plus and join today.
This week, the critics discuss Leave No Trace, directed by Debra Granik, about a veteran with PTSD who has been living off the grid with his daughter. They unpack the movie’s scarcity of dialogue, its absence of villains, and the performances of Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie. Next, Sacha Baron Cohen is back with a new show, Who Is America? How does his comedy play during the Trump presidency? Finally, the gabbers weight in on Starbucks’s plastic-straw ban and wonder whether it will actually make a significant environmental impact.
Links to some of the things we discussed this week:
- Winter’s Bone
- Stray Dog
- The Culture Gabfest’s discussion of Call Me by Your Name
- Willa Paskin reviews Who Is America? in Slate
- Da Ali G Show
- Video of a sea turtle with a straw up its nostril
- Reason’s calculation that Starbucks’ new lids use more plastic than the original lid-straw combination
- Henry Grabar argues that we should respect the straw ban in Slate
Endorsements:
Dana: The Jerusalem Post’s article “World’s Oldest Bread Found at Prehistoric Site in Jordan“
Julia: “Ancient Romans Hunted ‘Sea Monsters.’ Were They Whales?” in the New York Times and The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte
Stephen: Bartlett House in Ghent, New York, and Slow Burn
You can email us at culturefest@slate.com.
This podcast was produced by Benjamin Frisch.
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