The following podcast contains explicit language.

I'm Stephen McCaff, and this is the Slate Culture Gap Fest, All This Science I Don't

Understand edition. It's Wednesday, June 5th, 2019. On today show, Rocket Man is a fanciful

biopic of the legendary pianist, singer-songwriter, rock icon Elton John. And then Chernobyl is

HBO's new limited series. It's a dramatized deep dive into the catastrophic failure of the

nuclear reactor in the late 1980s.

And finally, Cops is the first and by almost any measure the most successful reality TV show

in history.

A new podcast looks at how it's made who it has harmed and how it has framed our understanding

of crime in America.

Julia Turner will not be joining us today due to a,

I'm sorry to report medical emergency. I hope she's doing well, Julia, get better. So we've

gathered up a team of people to see us through on a last minute basis. The culture editor of

Slate is Forrest Wickman. He's been choppered in.

It's so true.

Forrest, how are you doing?

Good.

Welcome back to the show.

And, of course, Slate's film critic is Dana Stevens. Hey, Dana.

Hey, hey.

In one sense, Rocket Man is a by the book's rock and roll biopic.

A young Reginald Dwight grows up in a miserably broken and cold home,

...