Culture Gabfest

Dana Stevens, Sam Adams discuss the new film The Rider with Inkoo Kang, Childish Gambino's song and video for This Is America with Aisha Harria, and Jia Tolentino's New Yorker piece "The Promise of Vaping and the Rise of Juul" with Lena Wilson. 

Stephen Metcalf, Julia Turner, and Dana Stevens, discuss the new film Tully with Slate's Willa Paskin, who sticks around to talk about her new podcast Decoder Ring and the history of the laugh track, and finally: are you a brand? Should you be one?

Julia Turner is here to introduce you to the new show from Slate's TV Critic Willa Paskin. Decoder Ring: the show about cracking cultural mysteries. Subscribe here to get episodes as soon as they're ready.Every episode we’ll take on a cultural object, idea, or habit and speak with experts, historians and obsessives to try to figure out where it comes from, what it means and why it matters. Why do we get so invested in fictional romances? What does it mean to wear a baseball hat backwards? Why do we clap? What do people think about all day? Decoder Ring explores questions and topics you didn't know you were curious about.In our first episode, we ask: What happened to the laugh track? For nearly five decades, it was ubiquitous, but beginning in the early 2000s, it fell out of sitcom fashion. What happened? How did we get from Beverly Hillbillies to 30 Rock? We meet the man who created the laugh track, which originated as a homemade piece of technology, and trace that technology’s fall and the rise of a more modern idea about humor. With the help of historians, laugh track obsessives, the showrunners of One Day at a Time and the director of Sports Night, we wonder if the laugh track was about something bigger than laughter.

Julia Turner, Dana Stevens, and Stephen Metcalf discuss the Netflix documentary series Wild, Wild, Country, the flap over the White House Correspondents Dinner, and nooks and crannies of Youtube subculture with Slate's Justin Peters. 

Bon Jovi are many things: platinum-selling, chart-topping and now, Hall of Fame–inducted. That angers music critics, who have been slagging off this band of hard-rock prom kings since the 1980s. Among the haters is Hit Parade host Chris Molanphy, who has loathed Bon Jovi since high school. But even he can’t deny it: Bon Jovi are hugely influential. In the wake of their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, Chris puts aside his animus to explain how the biggest band in hair metal have remained strangely relevant—thanks to their deathless hits, their album sales and, more recently, their influence on a certain hair-metal-loving Swedish pop producer. Email: hitparade@slate.com  

Dana Stevens, Jonathan Fischer, and Forrest Wickman spoil Avengers: Infinity War.Production by Daniel Schroeder

Stephen Metcalf, Julia Turner, and Dana Stevens discuss the new BBC America series Killing Eve, the film from Lynne Ramsay, You Were Never Really Here, and ask themselves: "should we delete Facebook?"

Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner discuss the hit horror film A Quiet Place, the new adaptation of Howard's End on the BBC and Starz, and Barbara Ehrenreich's essay: "Why I'm Giving Up On Preventative Care".

Dana Stevens, Julia Turner, and Willa Paskin discuss the return of ABC's Roseanne, Kacey Musgraves' album Golden Hour with Slate's Carl Wilson, and Molly Ringwald's essay in the New Yorker: "What About 'The Breakfast Club'?"

Dana Stevens, Laura Hudson, Dawnthea Price, and Forrest Wickman spoil Ready Player One.

Dana Stevens, Christina Cauterucci, and Sam Adams discuss the new Steven Spielberg film Ready Player One, HBO's new assassination comedy series Barry, and the Cannes Film Festival's decision to ban Netflix films from competing in the festival.

In 1998, Madonna was at a career crossroads. After dominating the ’80s with hits like “Like a Virgin” and “Open Your Heart,” she spent the first half of the ’90s wavering between roles as a provocateur (Erotica, Sex) and adult-contemporary balladeer (“I’ll Remember,” “Take a Bow”). That’s when she took a sharp left turn, working with producers and deejays in the burgeoning electronica scene. If it even was a scene: The very term “electronica” was a music-business confection, and by 1997 it was more hype than hit. But the result of Madonna’s experiment—her acclaimed ’98 album Ray of Light—was not only one of her biggest smashes ever. It also helped turn electronic music into viable pop. Email: hitparade@slate.com   

Dana Stevens, Dan Kois, and Isaac Butler discuss the revival of Tony Kushner's Angels in America which recently arrived on Broadway, The World Only Spins Forward, the oral history of Angels in America, and the film Love, Simon with Slate's Alex Barasch. 

Dana Stevens, Forrest Wickman, and Inkoo Kang spoil Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs.

Julia Turner, Dana Stevens, and Gabriel Roth discuss Armando Iannucci's new film The Death of Stalin about the power struggle's in the days after Stalin's death in 1953 Soviet Russia, NBC's new musical series Rise about a high school drama director, and the power or lack thereof of Twitter metrics and if we'd be better off without them.