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culture gabfest: Slate's weekly roundtable.

The Culture Gabfest Summer Movie BonanzaListen to Slate's new show about the week in culture.

By Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner
Updated Wednesday, May 7, 2008, at 11:39 AM ET

Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 7 by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:



You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.

In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner discuss the rollout of the summer movie season, including the superhero movie Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr.'s nimble performance in it, and which of this summer's blockbusters look most promising.

Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned in the show:

Entertainment Weekly's summer movie release calendar
Iron Man, reviewed by Dana Stevens
The New York Times profiles Robert Downey Jr.
You Don't Mess With the Zohan official site
Indiana Jones official site
A 2006 New York Times profile of Mike Myers and his hiatus from films
Mike Myers and Deepak Chopra, together at last

The Culture Gabfest weekly endorsements:

Dana's pick: Carrier on PBS
Julia's pick: Project Runway
Stephen's pick: Jimi Hendrix's live performance of Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone"

Posted by Matthew Lieber on May 7 at 11:00 a.m.

April 23, 2008

Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 6 with critics Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:



You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe to the new, dedicated Culture Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.

In this week's Culture Gabfest, critics Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner discuss whether personal virtue can solve global warming, the possible failure of personal virtue in the travel writing business, and the utter failure of personal virtue inside Abu Ghraib.

Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned in the show:

Michael Pollan's New York Times Magazine article "Why Bother?"
Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan's Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia
Thomas Kohnstamm's book Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?
Lonely Planet responds to the Kohnstamm scandal
Errol Morris' Standard Operating Procedure
Film: Iraq in Fragments
"Photo Finish: How the Abu Ghraib photos morphed from scandal to law," by Dahlia Lithwick
Julia's pick: Hot Chip
100 best novels from Random House
Dana's pick: Elizabeth Bowen's The Death of the Heart
Stephen's pick: The Bachelor

Posted by Andy Bowers on April 23 at 11:37 a.m.

April 9, 2008

Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 5, with critics Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:



You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.

In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics discuss whether the latest Vogue cover is racist (or just the subject of misplaced outrage in the blogosphere), whether Hillary's tax return explodes the Clintons' middle-class image, and whether the new online sitcom The Guild is for nerds only.

Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned in the show:

Vogue's "King Kong" cover
Slate's take on the Vogue cover
John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the cover of Rolling Stone, photographed by Annie Leibovitz
Hillary Clinton's 2007 tax return (as disclosed by Hillary)
The Guild: official show site, YouTube channel
World of Warcraft
Quarterlife (no longer) on NBC
M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel
AC/DC
Am I That Name? by Denise Riley
BBC Radio 4's Start the Week

Posted by Amanda Aronczyk on April 9 at 11:12 a.m.

March 26, 2008

Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 4 with critics Stephen Metcalf, Meghan O'Rourke, and John Swansburg by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:



You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.

In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics discuss whether Barack Obama was channeling Walt Whitman, whether the head of JPMorgan was channeling Gordon Gekko, and whether English professors should be channeling Wal-Mart associates.

Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned in the show:

Barack Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech
Walt Whitman's Song of Myself
New York magazine's profile of Jamie Dimon
Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street
Joseph Schumpeter's "Creative Destruction"
The New York Times' "You Say Recession, I Say 'Reservations!' "
NOBU restaurant in New York City
Gerald Graff's Professing Literature: An Institutional History
Meghan's pick: The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine
John's pick: Dispatches by Michael Herr
Stephen's pick: Boys and Girls in America from the Hold Steady

Posted by Andy Bowers on March 26 at 8:16 p.m.

March 12, 2008

Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 3 with critics Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and John Swansburg by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:

You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.

Our newest podcast, the Culture Gabfest, is back just in time to take on the Eliot Spitzer meltdown and how it's echoing through the media. Critics Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and John Swansburg also discuss the recent rash of fake memoirs and a breakout blog that claims to shed light on stuff white people like.

Here are links to some of the items mentioned in this week's episode:

"The Fake Memoirist's Survival Guide" on Slate
A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley
The Stuff White People Like blog
Stuff White People Like on NPR's Talk of the Nation
Dana Stevens' pick: Chop Shop
John Swansburg's pick: Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Women To Play in the National Hockey League by Cleo Birdwell (aka Don DeLillo)
Stephen Metcalf's pick: Top Gear from BBC America

Posted by Andy Bowers on March 12 at 11:55 a.m.

Feb. 28, 2008

Here's the sophomore outing of our newest audio program, the Culture Gabfest, with critics Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner. To listen, click the arrow on the audio player below:

You can also download the program here, or you can subscribe to the weekly Gabfest podcast feed in iTunes by clicking here.

In this edition, the panelists discuss the aftermath of the Oscars, the challenge Barack Obama poses for comedians, and Lindsay Lohan's Marilyn Monroe impression. Here are some of the links for items mentioned in the show:

Daniel Day-Lewis' Oscar acceptance speech
Saturday Night Live's Obama/Clinton debate sketch
Lindsay Lohan's New York magazine photo shoot
Julia Turner's Oscar fashion dialogue with Amanda Fortini
The Encyclopedia Baracktannica

Posted by Andy Bowers on Feb. 28 at 3:07 p.m.

Feb. 14, 2008

To play the first Culture Gabfest, click the arrow on the player below.

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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 is Slate's culture editor. You can e-mail her at .
Illustration by Robert Neubecker.
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