This week, the panel is joined by pop critic and chart analyst (and host of Slate’s Hit Parade podcast) Chris Molanphy for our annual Summer Strut episode. The four dive into the longest listener-suggested summer playlist to date (this year, it’s a 682 song behemoth that adds up to approximately 42 hours!) and take turns in an electric, strut-ty roundtable discussion of their top picks.

You can find their collective favorites here in the Summer Strut '23 Shortlist:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6Ivpm4HVLsMw3LFwkgp7lw?si=90d2d26d65264157

To view Dana, Steve, Julia, and Chris's personal shortlists, and the original massive playlist, check out the Summer Strut show page at slate.com/culturefest.

In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, the panel does an additional round of their Strut-iest picks.

Email us at culturefest@slate.com. 

Podcast production by Cameron Drews. Production assistance by Kat Hong. 

This episode is sponsored by the podcast About the Journey. Learn more here: https://traveler.marriott.com/about-the-journey/

If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows. You’ll also be supporting the work we do here on the Culture Gabfest. Sign up now at Slate.com/cultureplus to help support our work.
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Summer Strut 2023

New York Times critic Dwight Garner says “The Slate Culture Gabfest is one of the highlights of my week.” The award-winning Culturefest features critics Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner debating the week in culture, from highbrow to pop. For more of Slate’s culture podcasts, check out the Slate Culture feed.

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Visual Arts

TV & Film

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Film Reviews

Entertainment News

On this week’s show, the hosts begin by discussing Challengers, Luca Guadagnino’s sexy tennis flick in which Zendaya stars as Tashi Duncan, the muse and lover of two male players, Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor). It’s a smart but silly movie, one that paints a beautifully nested portrait of friendship and rivalry, and explores the complexities of desire. Then, the three dissect Baby Reindeer, an incredibly constructed and emotionally intense psychodrama–and a true-ish tale–by creator and star Richard Gadd. The seven-part series is currently dominating Netflix and explores themes including masculinity, sexuality, and abuse. Finally, what is a magazine now? The hosts consider this question, inspired by Jessica Testa’s article for The New York Times profiling Highsnobiety, a store-website-production agency-clothing line hybrid that recently won a National Magazine Award for general excellence, the publication’s first nomination and win at the “Oscars of the magazine world.” 
In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, the panel jumps into a classic spoiler special and discusses the final scene of Challengers. 
Email us at culturefest@slate.com. 
Outro music: "The Red Light Special" by Matt Large
Endorsements:
Dana: A piece of Britain everyone can access: Mr Bates vs The Post Office on Hulu. 
Julia: Samin Nosrat’s recipe for Clam Pasta, which can be found in her book, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. 
Steve: 
“How Penelope Fitzgerald became a late blooming novelist.” By Henry Oliver. 
Hosts
Dana Stephens, Julia Turner, Stephen Metcalf
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Zendaya Plays Doubles

On this week’s episode, the panel is first joined by Slate’s music critic, Carl Wilson, to puzzle over The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift’s much-anticipated 11th studio album. Stuffed with 31 tracks, the two-part album is a departure from the billionaire pop star’s otherwise perfectly crafted oeuvre: it’s messy and drippy, and at times, manic and frenetic. Is this secretly a cry for help? And more importantly, when did she find the time to record this thing? Then, the three explore Fallout, a post-apocalyptic drama series adapted from the extremely popular role-playing video game of the same name. Executive produced by Jonathan Nolan (Westworld, Person of Interest) and streaming on Prime Video, Fallout certainly achieves a high level of immersive world-building, but do the stories and characters fare the same? Finally, Becca Rothfeld, the Washington Post’s non-fiction book critic, joins to discuss her triumphant first book, All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess, in which she rebukes the culture’s affinity for minimalism and makes the case for living in a maximalist world. 
In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, it’s part two of the Ambition versus Contentment discussion (courtesy of a listener question from Gretel): How should a parent approach cultivating ambition in a child, if at all? The hosts discuss. 
Email us at culturefest@slate.com. 
Outro music: "Ruins (Instrumental Version)" by Origo
Endorsements:
Dana: The Teacher’s Lounge, a film by German-Turkish director Ilker Çatak. It was a Best International Film nominee at the 96th Academy Awards. (Also, Ebertfest in Champaign, Illinois!)
Julia: Kristen Wiig’s Jumanji sketch on Saturday Night Live, inspired by Dana. 
Stephen: The British band Jungle, introduced to him by his daughter. A few favorite songs: “Back on 74,” “Dominoes,” and “All of the Time.” 
Podcast production by Jared Downing. Production assistance by Kat Hong. 
Hosts
Dana Stevens, Julia Turner, Stephen Metcalf
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Taylor Swift’s Messy Maximalism

On this week’s show, Slate culture writer (and Very, Very Good Friend of the Show, a.k.a. VVGFOP) Nadira Goffe sits in for Dana Stevens. The three begin with Civil War, writer-director Alex Garland’s (Ex Machina, Annihilation, Men) dystopian travelog starring Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, and Wagner Moura that imagines a burned out, bombed out America in the throes of a raging internal conflict. But who is fighting whom? Our panel discusses. Then, they examine Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show, an eight-part series on Max depicting a very different civil war. Here, the exemplary sit-down stand-up comedian goes to war with himself, his public image, and the very nature of “reality.” It’s “Seinfeld meets reality TV meets Sylvia Plath,” and is a painfully naked confessional that begs the question: “Is Jerrod Carmichael trolling us?” (Read Nadira’s fantastic piece, “Who Did People Think Jerrod Carmichael Is?” Finally, the trio turns to “gaslighting,” the pop psychology term up for debate in Leslie Jamison’s essay for The New Yorker, “So You Think You’ve Been Gaslit.” Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year in 2022, is “gaslighting” a handy term used to describe harmful behavior? Or has “gaslighting” become so ubiquitous, it’s lost all meaning? The panel gets into it. 
In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, the hosts explore stuffed animals (including but not limited to: Squishmallows, Jelly Cats, and “lovies”), the difference between a blanket and blankie, and the joys of embracing one’s inner child, inspired by Valerie Trapp’s essay for The Atlantic, “Welcome to Kidulthood.” 
Email us at culturefest@slate.com. 
Outro music: "200 Dont's" by Conditional
Endorsements:
Nadira: (1) The Wiz revival on Broadway. 
(2) Costco! 
(3) Willow Smith’s new song, “b i g f e e l i n g s” off of her upcoming album, empathogen. 
Julia: G. T. Karber’s book of puzzles, Murdle: 100 Simple to Impossible Mysteries to Solve Using Logic, Skill, and the Power of Deduction. “It’s a cross between an LSAT logic puzzle and a murder mystery.” 
Stephen: Becca Rothfeld’s debut essay collection, All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess. (Becca will be on the show next week to discuss! For extra credit, grab a copy of her book and come prepared.)
Podcast production by Jared Downing. Production assistance by Kat Hong. 
Hosts
Nadira Goffe, Julia Turner, Stephen Metcalf
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Civil War: What Is It Good For?

On this week’s show, the panel is first joined by Slate business and culture writer Nitish Pahwa to discuss Monkey Man, Dev Patel’s dazzling but muddled directorial debut. The ultra-violent action flick stars Patel as Kid, a young man who works his way into a secret brothel for the super rich, hell-bent on finding the police chief who murdered his mother and exacting his revenge. It’s clearly a political statement of a film, rife with references to real-world controversies and corrupt political, religious, and pedagogical practices (all of which Nitish covers in his piece for Slate, “Monkey Man Has a Bold New Vision”). Then, the three jump into Ripley, a new eight-part Netflix series based on Patricia Highsmith’s master novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley, starring 47-year-old Andrew “Hot Priest” Scott as the titular seductive psychopath. Directed by Steven Zaillian (The Night Of, Schindler’s List, All the King’s Men) and with cinematography by Robert Elswith (Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, Good Night, and Good Luck), the series is shot in spectacular black-and-white and co-stars Dakota Fanning as Marge Sherwood and Johnny Flynn as Dickie Greenleaf. Finally, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (of Veep, Saturday Night Live, and Seinfeld fame, obviously) has a podcast, Wiser Than Me, which just entered its second season. On it, she interviews iconic older women like Jane Fonda, Carol Burnett, Bonnie Raitt, and Sally Field about the wisdom they’ve accrued and asks the question: “Well, how should I live?” While the show doesn’t fully avoid the pitfalls of the celebrity interview, secrets and things emerge within the course of a conversation and the framework itself gets to the very core of human existence. 
In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, the panel answers a fittingly existential question from listener Gretel: “Wondering how you, high achievers all, balance ambition with contentment. Do you consider yourselves competitive or is your drive innate? I vacillate between pushing myself harder, striving to achieve more, and being grateful for what I have and where I am. Is contentment a noble endgame in your opinions?”
Email us at culturefest@slate.com. 
Outro music: “Bollywood Star” by Jhukane Bada.
Endorsements:
Dana: Andrew Scott’s performance as Hamlet in 2017. (The full three-hour production can be watched on YouTube.) 
Julia: Worn: A People’s History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser. An absolutely beautiful and fascinating book about the centrality of textile production throughout history. 
Stephen: “Lowell, Plath, and Sexton in the Same Room” by Steve Moyer for the National Endowment for the Humanities (Spring 2024, Volume 45.) 
Podcast production by Jared Downing. Production assistance by Kat Hong. 
Hosts
Dana Stephens, Julia Turner, Stephen Metcalf
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Dev Patel Goes John Wick

On this week’s show, the panel is first joined by Slate culture writer (and the Gabfest’s Senior Beyoncé Correspondent) Nadira Goffe to dissect Beyoncé’s latest album, Cowboy Carter. Released on March 29th, Cowboy Carter is a 27-track behemoth with a country soul, packed with archival footage and songs that span multiple genres. To call it a country album would be too simplistic, so we’ll stick with Queen Bey’s own words: Cowboy Carter is a Beyoncé album. Then, the three jump into Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, an avant-garde film from Romanian director Radu Jude that perfectly captures life in the 21st century. Finally, the trio examine Steve! (martin): a documentary in 2 pieces, a new two-part series directed by Morgan Neville (Will You Be My Neighbor?), which analyzes the legendary Steve Martin, an inscrutable human being and American icon. 
In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, the panel discusses their personal relationships to hotels. 
Email us at culturefest@slate.com. 
Outro music: "I Can Still Dance" by Tigerblood Jewel
Endorsements:
Dana: Critic Nicolas Rapold’s interview with Radu Jude, the director of Do Not Expect Much From the End of the World, on his podcast, The Last Thing I Saw. It’s a great companion piece to listen to after watching the film.   
Julia: The Fraud by Zadie Smith, a historical novel set in Victorian England. If you’ve read this book and have strong feelings, please email Julia at cultfest@slate.com to dissect the work and discuss. 
Stephen: Penelope Fitzgerald, the Booker Prize-winning novelist, poet, and essayist. Specifically, her 1995 novel, the Blue Flower. 
Podcast production by Jared Downing. Production assistance by Kat Hong. 
Hosts
Dana Stephens, Julia Turner, Stephen Metcalf
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Summer Strut 2023

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