I'm Stephen McAffe, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest, Angelina Jolie Firefighter Edition.

It's Wednesday, May 26, 2021.

On today's show, Angelina Jolie stars in Those Who Wish Me Dead, a thriller about a

remote Montana community beset by a pair of terrifying assassins and a wildfire. It's on HBO

Max. And then we discuss a weird publishing phenomenon, the genre that overlaps literary criticism

with self-help with Slate's own book and culture critic Laura Miller.

And finally, I have always said that there is a special connection between Julia's lips and

God's ears, but no sooner had she said that the Marvel character, Modoc, deserved his own show.

Then he got one. We discussed this MCU mature audiences cartoon with Slate's Jonathan Fisher, tech editor for the magazine.

Joining me today is Julia Turner, Deputy Managing Editor of the LA Times.

Julia, your lips, God's ears, right?

If only I had, if every endorsement that I utter became a new cultural product, I didn't know I had such

power. And now that I've seen its results, I'm not sure how I want to use it.

Beware the monkey's paw. Many bad shows will flow forth from Julius Lips.

And of course, Dana Stevens is the film critic for Slade. Hey, Dana.

Hello, Stephen.

Those Who Wish Me Dead is the Wildfire thriller up on HBO Max right now. It stars Angelina Jolie as Hannah, a

smoke jumper. She parachutes into infernos to fight the flames and rescue the stranded.

Hannah, we quickly see as a hard drinking, hard living, one of the guys' gal, but she's

guilt-ridden for failing to rescue three children during the last big fire. Here, I must pause and say,

for a fairly terse, efficient 100-minute thriller, there are some entangled plot lines here. Let me do my

best. The thriller plot centers on a forensic accountant who knows very bad

...