The Culture Gabfest, "Does It Get Better?" Edition
Listen to Slate's show about Dan Savage's It Gets Better campaign and the rest of the week in culture.
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Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 108 with Stephen Metcalf, Jody Rosen, Dana Stevens, June Thomas, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:
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In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner are joined by June Thomas to discuss It Gets Better, the Web campaign addressed to gay teens, and the newly discovered Ted Hughes poem "Last Letter," about the days before Sylvia Plath died. They're joined by Jody Rosen to discuss HBO's new Bruce Springsteen documentary The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town.
Here are some links to the things we discussed this week:
The YouTube channel for the It Gets Better Web campaign.
The original It Gets Better video from Dan Savage and his husband.
Watch It Gets Better videos from Christine Quinn, Tim Gunn, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet.
The New Statesman exclusive on Ted Hughes' poem about the night Sylvia Plath died.
Channel 4 News' story on the new Hughes poem, including a partial reading of the poem by the actor Jonathan Pryce.
Watch a trailer for the new HBO documentary The Promise here.
The Culture Gabfest weekly endorsements:
Jody's pick: Al Green's album I'm Still in Love With You and the Philip Larkin poem "Sad Steps."
Dana's pick: Sylvia Plath's journals and Diane Middlebrook's book Her Husband.
Julia's pick: The NBC sitcom Community.
Steve's pick: The music of Solomon Burke and the 1965 Julie Christie film Darling.
Outro: Solomon Burke's "Cry to Me"
You can e-mail us at culturefest@slate.com.
Podcast production by Jesse Baker.