Culture Gabfest: Colbert is Cancelled Edition

Slate Culture

Slate Podcasts

Arts, Tv & Film, Music

4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2025

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Disinfect your groceries and mind the 5G, on this week’s show Steve, Dana, and guest host Sam Adams dive into the dread-inducing world of Ari Aster’s Eddington. Starring Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal, the neo-Western explores the conspiracy-brained, mentally unstable summer of 2020 when COVID brews unrest in a small town. Like said town, the panel is divided. Next, they talk about why one of the biggest selling musical acts of all time has been both a national treasure and a forever punchline in their discussion of the documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes. Finally, they take on what CBS’s decision to cancel the Late Show with Stephen Colbert means for both late night TV and democracy itself with New York Times TV critic James Poniewozik. In an exclusive Slate Plus bonus episode, the panel shares their feelings about phone location sharing. Email us at [email protected]. Endorsements: Dana: The best use of a Billy Joel song in a soundtrack: "Carded and Discarded," episode 7 of Freaks and Geeks: Sam: The anti-establishment, anarchist British Post-punk band the Mekons’ 1989 album The Mekons Rock n’ Roll. Steve: Stephen Colbert talking with Dua Lipa about faith and comedy and Esbjörn Svensson Trio’s “Somewhere Else Before” from the album Live in Gothenberg. 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 to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Stephen Metcalfe, and this is the Slate Culture Gapfest.
0:13.4	Colbert is canceled edition.
0:15.6	It's Wednesday, July 23rd, 2025.
0:19.4	On today's show, the filmmaker Ari Astor returns with a darker than dark
0:23.6	Eddington. It stars Joaquin Phoenix as a New Mexico sheriff at the center of a community
0:29.1	coming apart at the seams during the summer of 2020, the summer of the pandemic and Black Lives Matter
0:34.2	and me too. It also stars Pedro Pascal and Emma Stone.
0:39.5	And then Billy Joel is one of the biggest selling pop acts of all time.
0:43.3	A new five-hour doc on HBO explores the career and inner torments of the man behind
0:48.4	all that pugilistic fronting and 150 million units sold. And finally, in a surprise move, CBS has canceled the late show with
0:57.7	Stephen Colbert to help sort out the significance of this. Was it punitive? Was it purely economics?
1:04.5	As well as the fate of late night in general. We are joined by James Panoazek, the chief TV critic of the New York Times, delighted to speak with him.
1:12.8	But first, also delighted to speak with Sam, Slate writer, and senior editor. Sam, welcome back to the show.
1:18.8	Thanks for having me.
1:19.8	This is like a third-timer face-to-face?
1:22.2	I think it might be, yeah.
1:23.3	Yeah, that's a nice run.
1:24.7	There's a lot of beauty in this room.
1:28.8	Fuck off.
1:30.1	A little Billy Jolian sincerity from Sam.
1:33.4	And Dennis Stevens, of course, the film critic for Slate.
1:36.7	Hello, Steve.
	...

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