Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 311 with Stephen Metcalf, Julia Turner, David Haglund, and Seth Stevenson with the audio player below.

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Buy tickets to the Culture Gabfest live show in Los Angeles on Oct. 8, featuring screenwriters John August and Craig Mazin of Scriptnotes, among others. Slate Plus members get 30 percent off the ticket price.

And this week Slate Plus listeners hear homecoming critic Stephen Metcalf talk about his recent sojourn to Paris. Go to slate.com/cultureplus to learn more about Slate Plus and join today.

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On this week’s episode, Steve, Julia, and Slate senior editor David Haglund talk about the new Whit Stillman pilot The Cosmopolitans, part of the current raft of Amazon pilots. Is this a return to form, or just more of Stillman’s characteristic bourgeoisie-skewering? Next up, Seth Stevenson joins the gabbers to talk Twitch.tv. Amazon has just bought the online platform for watching other people play video games. Are video games the new spectator sport and, if so, how should critics of more, er, classic media feel about it? Finally, Ivan Kreilkamp's screed contra screeds in the New Yorker takes on the genre of [X]-bashing, citing Cicero, Sontag, and Slate's Ruth Graham in the process. But what's a critic to do, if she may not critique? The gabbers weigh in on Kreilkamp’s aggressive argument.

Links to some of the things we discussed this week follow:

• The Cosmopolitans on Amazon
• Whit Stillman’s 1990 movie Metropolitan
• Adam Gopnik’s Paris to the Moon
• Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris
• Amazon’s new show Transparent
• Twitch.tv
• Seth Stevenson’s article on Twitch on Slate
• Ivan Kreilkamp’s New Yorker piece “Against ‘Against [X]’”
• #slatepitches on Twitter
• Dana Stevens’ classic piece of invective against flip-flops on Slate
• “Against Chairs” in Jacobin

This year’s call-in show is coming up! Don’t forget to call in with your questions for the gabbers while they’re on retreat: 725-222-FEST (725-222-3378).

Endorsements:

David: the late singer Phyllis Dillon, particularly her version of “Perfidia”

Julia: Women in Clothes, by Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, and Leanne Shapton

Steve: A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (1958) by Eric Newby

Outro: Phyllis Dillon, “Perfidia”

You can email us at culturefest@slate.com.

This podcast was produced by Ann Heppermann. Our intern is Josephine Livingstone.

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