Slow Burn · Slate Podcasts

The Slate Culture Gift Guide

December 17, 2025·48 min·4 clips

Three Slate podcast hosts gather to share their favorite holiday gifts, from a Beatles box set to a cantaloupe-shaped bowl.

First comes the object. A Beatles album box set gets praised as something worth hearing and nice enough to leave on the coffee table, especially because the booklet essays trace the band's evolution. Then comes the joke: after hearing all that evolution talk, another speaker says the set could have been called Evolver. The joke turns into a useful correction. The speaker had assumed Yellow Submarine was a Ringo song, mostly because Ringo sang it. Chris separates the two things. In this conversation, Yellow Submarine is a Ringo vocal, not one of the rare Beatles songs he wrote. That changes the map fast. Chris says Ringo did not start writing songs until the White Album, with Don't Pass Me By. Octopus's Garden on Abbey Road is the other Ringo composition named from the band's main run, apart from a couple of co-credits. Before that, John and Paul often wrote songs for him to sing, including With a Little Help from My Friends on Sergeant Pepper. Covers make the credits even less obvious: Buck Owens's Act Naturally is a Ringo performance, but not a Ringo composition. George gets pulled in too, with Do You Want to Know a Secret named as an early George Harrison vocal on Please Please Me that still came from Lennon-McCartney. It stays breezy and mildly nerdy. A gift idea becomes a small cleanup of memory, credit, singing, and writing. Then the guide turns toward holiday movie-night gifts.

As heard by us

A holiday gift pick that doubles as a sharp Beatles refresher.

This segment makes a tidy holiday case for why some pop objects are worth keeping. The box set is treated as more than a purchase: the booklet, essays, and preserved original cover art are part of the appeal, and that gives the talk a little more depth about where the Beatles…

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Why you'd press play

For when you want a money tip on trimming your phone bill.

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