Slate Culture Feed

Last week we aired an episode about lonelygirl15, one of the first proper YouTube stars, and perhaps the most famous example of playing around with the boundaries of fiction and truth on the internet. But it was not the first. In 1995, aspiring filmmakers created the first ever soap opera on the Web, on a site called The Spot. Hollywood saw it as the future of entertainment. But a fan-led revolt showed that interactivity sometimes ...

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 ...

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 n...

On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by Slate Good Job columnist Laura Helmuth. In a recent Slate piece, Kate spoke to employees who say their bosses’ use of AI is making their work life harder. Laura and Kate discuss why bosses are using AI at such higher rates than their employees, and how employees can push back against their bosses’ attempts to shirk their responsibilities in favor of chatbots. 

This podcast ...

Hosts Alex Kirshner, Lindsay Gibbs, and Ben Lindbergh join forces one last time to break down (what else?) the week’s top sports stories. Then, the panel is joined by Hang Up all-star guests from across the years (including John Wertheim, Jeff Passan, Louisa Thomas, and more) to share memories from the show’s seventeen-year run and make predictions of the sports world for the next seventeen.

Finally, Lindsay closes us out with an Af...

Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a novel that follows a young college student who starts a flirtation, and then affair, with a college professor who ends up getting her pregnant.  Author Rufi Thorpe takes us through what happens next, as Margo decides to keep the baby and then joins OnlyFans in the earliest days of the site.   

The novel is now a TV show on AppleTV starring Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nicole Ki...

On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by creator Annie Rauwerda, who runs the popular @depthsofwikipedia account, to talk about 25 years of Wikipedia and the platform’s recent decision to ban AI. While Wikipedia has long been seen as an infinite well of knowledge, it’s kept alive by hundreds of thousands of dedicated human volunteers. From the teenager who’d drive to historical sites to find official sources to the persni...

Donna Summer was a hit-maker for two decades and a dance floor deity for more than three. Her collaborations with Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte were formative in dance, electronic, and rock music, influencing everyone from David Bowie and Blondie to Madonna and Moby. But the rock establishment was stinting in its appreciation—whether at Comiskey Park in Chicago in 1979 or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the 2000s.

In this...

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 sli...

In the summer of 2006, a teenage girl began posting video diaries to a then-new site called YouTube under the handle lonelygirl15. Within weeks she was a phenomenon—even though no one knew the truth of who she really was. The frenzied quest to change that, to solve the mystery of lonelygirl15, would ultimately land her on the front page of newspapers and the covers of magazines. Twenty years on, lonelygirl15 is both an artifact of ...

On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by Slate contributing writer Imogen West-Knights to talk about Shy Girl, the controversial novel whose U.S. publication was cancelled over suspected AI use. The incident reveals just how unprepared the publishing industry is to confront the rise of AI-generated material, but also how AI is secretly already being used in many creative industries—whether anyone likes it or not. 

Hosts Alex Kirshner, Lindsay Gibbs, and Ben Lindbergh recap a chalky March Madness marked by coaching drama and uncertainty about college basketball’s future. Then Alex and Lindsay ask Ben about the early MLB season, from the Automated Ball-Strike challenge system to a new wave of impressive rookies. Finally, the panel speaks with author and soccer journalist Ryan O'Hanlon about the real story behind Wrexham A.F.C. and how high the...

When Doree Shafrir started fertility treatments in her late thirties, she thought it would be relatively simple. It ended up taking multiple rounds and sinking her family into debt. 

Doree and her husband host the podcast Matt and Doree's Eggcellent Adventure: An IVF Journey. She also co-hosts Forever 35, and writes the work advice column for Slate, Good Job. 

Death, Sex & Money is now produced by Slate! To support us a...

On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by writer and content creator Josh Lora, who goes by TellTheBees on Substack, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. After yet another meaningless Chappell Roan controversy, this time involving a young fan and a security guard, Kate and Josh look into why Chappell Roan is always such a lightning rod for discourse. What seems like celebrity gossip ends up being used by bad actors online to sme...

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 p...

On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by Defector co-owner Alex Sujong Laughlin, whose recent piece about “lip filler accent” identified a new way TikTok is changing how we speak. Even people who don’t have any plastic surgery at all appear to be picking up on the trend, because when it comes to status, sounding like someone who has had plastic surgery is really all that matters. 

This podcast is produced by Vic W...

Hosts Lindsay Gibbs and Ben Lindbergh discuss the maddest moment of March—from the UConn buzzer beater, to Women’s Final Four redux. Alex Kirshner rejoins for two interviews: the first with author and professor Seth Tannenbaum about the growing class divide inside baseball stadiums, the subject of his new book, Bleacher Seats and Luxury Suites: Democracy and Division at the Twentieth-Century Ballpark. The second with Nina Mandell a...

A listener we're calling Natalie received over a million dollars after being sexually abused by her university gynecologist in one of the largest abuse settlements in American history. She talks about the strange math of converting a bad experience into a dollar amount, and why she’s barely spent any of it. 

*This episode includes descriptions of abuse. Please take care while listening. 

Death, Sex & Money is now produc...

On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by New York Magazine features writer Rebecca Jennings, who recently profiled the now-cancelled Bachelorette, Taylor Frankie Paul. Paul’s season was pulled after a video of her 2023 domestic violence incident was published by TMZ, following news of another domestic violence investigation from February of this year. While the video is upsetting, knowledge of Pauls’ 2023 arrest is not ne...