Culture Gabfest

Slate Podcasts

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Smart arguments about culture in motion.

The gist

Culture Gabfest moves quickly across current culture, from The Bride! to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show. Its conversations balance critic vocabulary, sharp disagreement, and loose rapport among Slate voices and visiting critics.

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About Culture Gabfest

Culture Gabfest is a critic-driven conversation about the week’s cultural weather: films, television, music, podcasts, books, celebrity documentaries, and the broader social meanings attached to them. The show’s recent stretch is broad without feeling random. The Bride!, Paul McCartney: Man on the Run, vertical dramas, Epic: Elvis Presley, The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, Famous Last Words, How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, Wuthering Heights, Love Story, The Muppet Show, Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show, If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You, The Rest is History, It Was Just an Accident, Mel Brooks: The 99-Year-Old Man, protest music, and a Slate Culture Gift Guide all sit inside the same critical frame. The premise is simple. Culture is worth arguing over carefully. The pleasure comes from hearing smart readers and viewers test their reactions in public, often with a mix of precision, impatience, affection, and dry comedy. A movie can be admired for one performance and still challenged for its borrowed structure. A TV revival can be treated as nostalgia, strategy, and actual entertainment at once. A halftime show can become a discussion of beauty, joy, density, and public meaning. The register is literate but not sealed in glass. Names and references fly quickly, yet the conversation keeps touching recognizable questions: what worked, what felt false, what a form is trying to do, and why a cultural object catches fire. The show also has a lived-in Slate looseness. Recent excerpts include guest introductions, cross-podcast overlap, jokes about careers and cities, and a call-in conversation that turns the word culture into a surprisingly knotty subject. That looseness matters. It keeps the criticism from becoming only verdicts. Culture Gabfest suits a listener who wants cultural criticism with appetite: current enough to track the week, learned enough to make comparisons, and conversational enough to let disagreement stay alive.

Made for: Suits a listener who follows film, television, music, books, and media as connected parts of public life. Best for someone who enjoys criticism with references, disagreements, and quick shifts in register.

What sets it apart: The show’s range is unusually elastic: Oscar talk, Muppets, protest songs, celebrity final interviews, history podcasts, and gift-guide culture can share the same table. Its strength is not just coverage, but the friction between informed takes.

In their own words

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.Want more Culture Gabfest? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Culture Gabfest show page. Or, visit slate.com/cultureplus...

film criticismtelevision and streaming seriesmusic and performancecelebrity documentariesbooks and literary culturepodcasts as cultureprotest musicpopular culture debates

Talks about

TV & Film

Best episodes of Culture Gabfest

Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.

The Creator of Derry Girls Is Back EditionFeb 25, 2026

A sharp, back-and-forth review that keeps circling originality, structure, and performance.

Culture Gabfest finds a strong case for Lisa McGee's return, placing How to Get to Heaven from Belfast next to Gore Verbinski's AI-ravaged comeback.

The 2025 Call-In Spectacular EditionDec 31, 2025

A thoughtful debate about culture that keeps both high culture and everyday ritual in view.

The conversation takes a small word and opens it into a larger question about culture, moving between the polished idea of high culture and the everyday habits that make a family or community feel like itself.

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Find your next episode

About Culture Gabfest

In their own words

Talks about

Best episodes of Culture Gabfest

Podcasts like Culture Gabfest

Episodes

Paul Is Not Dead Yet Edition

Elvis Has Entered the Building Edition

The Creator of Derry Girls Is Back Edition

Heathcliff, It’s Me Cathy Edition

Bad Bunny Spikes the Football Edition

The Boss Responds to Minneapolis Edition

Is Hamnet this Year’s Oscar Villain? Edition

Game of Thrones Buddy Comedy Edition

Sydney Sweeney’s Box Office Triumph Edition

The Timothée Chalamet vs. the Blue Aliens Edition

The 2025 Call-In Spectacular Edition

We Found Our Archives: The Abstract Noun Edition

The Biggest Show on Paramount Is Big Oil Propaganda Edition

"Is the Warner Bros. Deal the End Of Cinema?" Edition

Knives Out Is Back with a New Hot Priest Edition

Wicked Triple Feature Edition

Glen Powell Does The Running Man Edition

The Slate Culture Gift Guide

The Slate Culture Gift Guide

The Creator of Breaking Bad is Back—with Polite Zombies Edition

Lily Allen’s Revenge Tour Edition

Netflix Goes Nuclear with A House of Dynamite Edition

Slate Plus Preview: Jad Abumrad Inquires How We Make the Gabfest

Guillermo del Toro Can Take Frankenstein Off His Bucket List Edition

Slate Plus Preview: Jad Abumrad Inquires How We Make the Gabfest

Channing Tatum on the Lam Edition

The Rock Goes for the Oscar Edition

One Banger After Another Edition

Jimmy Kimmel Is Back—Sort Of— Edition

Can Spinal Tap Still Go to 11 Edition

Is the Office Spinoff Good Cringe or Bad Cringe Edition

Austin Butler Is Caught Cat Sitting Edition

Denzel and Spike Remix a Classic Edition

Alien is Back Now With More Aliens Edition

The Naked Gun And The Nearly Naked Momoa Edition

Summer Strut 2025 Edition

Trump Goes on Down to South Park Edition

Colbert is Cancelled Edition

Woke Superman Saves the Box Office Edition

Sorry, Straight White Male Novelist Edition

Brad Pitt’s Victory Lap Edition

Daddygang Rage Virus Edition

Sandman vs. Predator

A Podcast Takes a Lot of Work!

Is The Resort a White Lotus Ripoff?

Alien Superstar

Summer Strut 2022

Money, Sex, and Space

Lava, Thunder, and Screaming Goats

Chef Boyar-Don't

Elvis, Please Leave the Building

Running Up That Flaming Hill

Go Extinct Faster!

Harry Styles: Your Mom's Favorite Hottie

Need for Speed

Put Your Pants Back On

Whose Woods Are These?

Aristocrats at Sea

Hamlet on Steroids

Hamlet on Steroids

Nick Cage Smooches Good

Wet Leg, Floppy Fingers

Do Androids Dream of Chris Pine?

The Godfather Is Great, but Is It Cake?

Weirdest Oscars Ever

Drive My Batmobile

Licorice Dystopia

Silicon Valley Pricks

The Very Worst Person in the World

New Jackass, Old Tricks

Exploiting Pamela Anderson...Again?

Book Twin Powers, Activate!

Double, Double Rogan in Trouble