Slate's Culture Gabfest on The Real Housewives of Washington D.C., literary agent Andrew Wylie's big bet on e-books, and the new FX comedy Louie.

Slate's Culture Gabfest on The Real Housewives of Washington D.C., literary agent Andrew Wylie's big bet on e-books, and…

Slate's Culture Gabfest on The Real Housewives of Washington D.C., literary agent Andrew Wylie's big bet on e-books, and…

Slate's weekly roundtable.
Aug. 4 2010 11:04 AM

The Culture Gabfest, "Biometric Barbie" Edition

Listen to Slate's show about The Real Housewives of Washington D.C. and the rest of the week in culture.

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The Culture Gabfest has moved! Find new episodes here.

Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 98 with Dahlia Lithwick, Stephen Metcalf, Troy Patterson, 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, June Thomas, and Julia Turner discuss Bravo's The Real Housewives of Washington D.C. with Dahlia Lithwick, chat about literary agent Andrew Wylie's new e-book venture with Amazon, and sing the praises of the new FX comedy Louie with television critic Troy Patterson.

Here are some links to the things we discussed this week:

Dahlia Lithwick's Slate review of The Real Housewives of Washington D.C.
The official Web site ofBravo's The Real Housewives of Washington D.C.
The New York Times'coverage of Andrew Wylie's new e-books enterprise.
Peter Osnos' Atlantic piece on what Wylie is really up to.
The Wikipedia page for the sports agent David Falk.
Slate's Troy Patterson defends his love for Louis C.K.'s new show Louie and for Pootie Tang.
Watch an episode of the new FX comedy Louie.

The Culture Gabfest weekly endorsements:

June's pick: Provincetown, Mass. Particularly tea dances, Devon's restaurant, and the book Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown.
Julia's pick: The Canon PowerShot S90, a camera that's great for shooting in low light.
Steve's pick: David Stockman's take on the national deficit for the New York Times.

Outro: Joan Jett's cover of "Louis, Louis."

You can e-mail us at culturefest@slate.com.

Posted by Jesse Baker at 11:04 a.m.

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June Thomas is managing producer of Slate podcasts.

Dahlia Lithwick writes about the courts and the law for Slate and hosts the podcast Amicus.

Stephen Metcalf is Slate’s critic at large. He is working on a book about the 1980s.

Dana Stevens is Slate’s movie critic.

Julia Turner, the former editor in chief of Slate, is a regular on Slate’s Culture Gabfest podcast.