Culture Gabfest

Richard Pryor redefined comedy by telling the truth, even when it scorched him.Today, we’re sharing a preview of a new podcast, Big Lives, and a special episode about Pryor.

Every week, hosts Kai Wright and Emmanuel Dzotsi dig into the BBC archive to explore the story behind the icons who shape our culture—trailblazers like David Bowie, Meg Ryan, Amy Winehouse, and Tina Turner—and better understand how each legend set the stage for our contemporary cultural landscape.

In this preview, Kai and Emmanuel look at how Richard Pryor rose from a Peoria, Illinois brothel to become comedy’s GOAT, only to then wrestle with racism, fame, desire, and self‑destruction. If you like what you hear, find more episodes of Big Lives on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts.
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On this week’s show, Dana, Steve, and Dan Kois get into cultural topics of various scales. First, they examine The Christophers, the latest film from Steven Soderbergh. The small scale two-hander starring Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel about an aging artist and an upstart forger is intentionally intimate, but is it too slight? They discuss.

Next, they pick up their cultural magnifying glasses to peep at The Miniature Wife, the new marital comedy series starring Matthew Macfadyen and Elizabeth Banks about a scientist who accidentally aims his shrink ray on his wife. Is this diminutive premise too small for its multiple episode execution? They discuss.

Finally, they take up the small but mighty objects apparently floating at the bottom of many an it girl’s purse: cigarettes. They respond to a recent piece in the Ankler “Cigarettes Get a Sequel: Hollywood’s ‘Cool’ Bad Habit Is Back.”

In an exclusive bonus episode for Slate Plus subscribers, the panel gazes at the vast expanse of space and talks about Artemis II’s mission to the far side of the moon.

Endorsements

Dan: The novel Possession by A.S. Byatt.

Steve: The essay in New York Review of Books “From the Rooftops of Tehran,” an anonymous first person account of life under fire from American and Israeli bombs.

Dana: The radio show Shocking Blue on New York’s WFUV from the DJ Delphine Blue— if you miss it on Saturday nights 8pm-11pm when it airs, check out at WFUV’s archives to listen to episodes after broadcast.

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Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch. Production assistance by Daniel Hirsch.
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What’s the worst thing Steve, Dana, and Julia have ever done? And would you still love them if you knew the answer to that question? That’s not a subject for today’s episode, but these three do get into The Drama, the dark, polarizing rom-com directed by Kristoffer Borgli starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson which is animated by such disquieting inquiries.

Next, it’s time for elk meat, Montana golden hour, and feckless city slickers as our hosts take on Taylor Sheridan’s latest The Madison. Starring Michelle Pfeiffer, our hosts agree it’s an effective Western soap opera but is its Red State agitprop worth the price of admission?

Finally… there’s good boy. With their curly mop tops and wet eyes, doodle dog hybrids have nuzzled their way into Americans’ hearts. What does that say about us? The hosts discuss these questions and more raised in a recent New Yorker piece by John Seabrook, How Doodles Became the Dog du Jour.

In a bonus episode for Slate Plus subscribers, they have a spoiler-rich conversation divulging all of The Drama’s dirty secrets.

Endorsements
Dana: The latest from children's book author (and Dana's partner) Rowboat Watkins, Mousestache, Mooosestache about a riotous world overrun with mustaches.

Julia: The memoir The Wanderers by immigration journalist Daniela Gerson detailing her unlikely family history.

Steve: Book three of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay and the work of singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith, including his cover of Bob Dylan's "Tight Connection to My Heart" and his self-titled debut album.

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Email us your thoughts at [email protected].

Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch. Production assistance by Daniel Hirsch.
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On this week’s show, Dana is joined by Slate’s own Nadira Goffe and Richard Lawson, of the Critical Darlings podcast. Their first agenda item is Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat, the second installment of the workplace comedy/reality show hybrid which places an unknowing everyman in a made-up scenario populated entirely by actors. Does the second season deliver a heart-warming moral test in the form of comedy or a manipulative prank? They discuss.

Next for more funhouse mirror television, they take up Bait, the Riz Ahmed-starring and created show about a Riz Ahmed-like actor vying for the role of James Bond. The show is stuffed with ideas and Ahmed’s charm, but they debate whether its conceptual martini sufficiently shaken or stirred.

Finally, it’s time to go out, wear something nice, and push as they take a listen to Sexistential, the new album by Swedish dance pop queen Robyn. Though the “Dancing On My Own” singer has a new partner on the dancefloor in her young son, motherhood and midlife make for some real club classics.

On a bonus episode for Plus subscribers, they take up the question, as posed in a recent New Yorker article, of whether “plagiarism is that bad?”

Endorsements

Richard: The compulsively watchable time travel family drama The Way Home, a Hallmark Channel Original. (And subscribing to Critical Darlings)

Nadira: The ten minute disco cover of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Linda Clifford and the album WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA by Slayyyter.

Dana: The new book by Mason Currey Making Art and Making a Living as well as his newsletter Subtle Maneuvers.

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Email us your thoughts at [email protected].

Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch. Production assistance by Daniel Hirsch.
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Welcome to a very special Money On Film miniseries!

Over three episodes, Slate Money’s Felix Salmon and Slate culture writer Nadira Goffe revisit three films at the intersection of culture and finance. On this episode, Nadira and Felix take a trip to a bathhouse for spirits in 2001’s Spirited Away.

Directed by Hayao Miyazaki, the film follows a girl named Chihiro, who becomes trapped in the spirit world and must save her parents, encountering soot sprites, river spirits, a giant baby, and many more wonderful and terrifying beings along the way.

The film is a masterpiece of storytelling and technical animation, but as Felix explains, it also works as a highly developed metaphor for capital and the Japanese economy at the close of the millennium: the bathhouse stands in for a stable but exploitative economic system, beset by outside capital forces, with workers stripped of their names and identities.

This is the final episode of the Money On Film miniseries. Thanks for listening!

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