The following podcast contains explicit language.

I'm Stephen Metcalf and this is the Slate Culture Gapest, the Cruel Angels thesis edition.

It's Wednesday, July 17th, 2019. On today's show, Peterloo is a sweeping

Mike Lee historical epic. It recounts the events surrounding the Peterloo massacre, which took

place in 1819, but remains to this day a formative experience for British politics, the labor

movement, and for all protest movements since it's now streaming on Amazon.

And then Neon Genesis Evangelion is an anime TV show from the 1990s.

It's now streaming on Netflix, which is a story in and of itself.

But anyway, we puzzle out this weird, wild boundary-pushing masterpiece with our own producer, Benjamin Frisch.

And finally, Mad Magazine, for all intents and purposes, is no more.

We will discuss the legacy of an American anti-establishment institution with Slate's own Dan Cois.

Joining me is Slate's film critic Dana Stevens. Hey, Dana.

Hey, Stephen.

And Julia Turner, who is the deputy managing editor at the LA Times. Hey, Julia.

Hello, hello.

It's August 1819, and tens of tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators have gathered in

St. Peter's Field in Manchester, England, outside of Manchester, I guess. When yeomanry and

cavalry descend upon the crowd to disperse it, they ended up killing at least

16 people. The body count really varies for political reasons. It tends to be either underestimated

or overestimated. You very commonly hear figures between about 14 and 18, many people arguing

it's probably higher and injuring hundreds and hundreds of other people as well,

including women and children. It was a largely but not exclusively working class crowd gathered

...