Culture Gabfest: Guillermo del Toro Can Take Frankenstein Off His Bucket List Edition

Slate Culture

Slate Podcasts

Arts, Tv & Film, Music

4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 October 2025

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this week’s show, Dana, Steve, and Julia step into the gothic, visually rich world of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. It’s been years in the making, gorgeously rendered, and stars the always compelling Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi, but it’s up for debate if something like a soul emerges from del Toro’s mad machinations. Next, author and journalist Stefan Fatsis joins the logophilic panel to talk about the uncertain fate of dictionaries as chronicled in his new book Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat To) the Modern Dictionary. Finally, the hosts talk about the sonically and narratively layered new podcast Fela Kuti: Fear No Man about the legendary Nigerian musician and activist— its acclaimed producer Jad Abumrad joins to discuss. In an exclusive Slate Plus bonus episode, Jad sticks around to pepper the Gabfesters with questions about how we make our own podcast week after week. Email us your thoughts at [email protected]. Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch. Production assistance by Daniel Hirsch. Endorsements Steve: Jad Abumrad's new podcast Fela Kuti: Fear No Man (yes, the one covered in this very episode— it's that good). Also, Ben Lerner’s essay “Cardiography” in the New York Review of Books. Jad: The dark Macedonian fantasy You Won’t Be Alone. Julia: “Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage,” David Foster Wallace's classic essay originally published in Harpers.Dana: Adam Gopnik's recent piece "What Do We Want from Our Child Stars?" in The New Yorker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Dana Stevens, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest, Guillermo del Toro takes Frankenstein off his bucket list edition.
0:17.3	It's Wednesday, October 22nd, 2025.
0:20.2	And this week we'll be discussing first off, Frankenstein,
0:22.7	Guillermo del Toro's lavish new adaptation of Mary Shelley's now 207-year-old novel. It stars Oscar Isaac
0:29.3	as the hubristic Dr. Frankenstein and Jacob Illorty as his tragic creation.
0:34.1	Next, we'll talk with the author, journalist, and longtime Slate podcast host Stefan Stefan Fatsis, about his new book Unabridged, in which he describes the current state of the American Dictionary.
0:44.9	Finally, another guest, Jad Abumrad of Radio Lab, will be here to talk about his astounding, truly astounding new podcast, Fear No Man about the great Nigerian musician and activist
0:55.3	Falakuti. Joining me today are the OGs Stephen Metcalf here in studio with me. Hey Steve.
1:01.8	Hey, Dana. And back again from a week off, Julia Turner in L.A. Hey, Julia. Hello, hello. How are you?
1:08.0	Although I think you were off last week, Dana, and I was on.
1:11.4	You're right, Julia. What is time? In fact, it's me. It's back from a week off. Welcome back me.
1:16.9	Jane Stevens. Welcome back, Dana. It gets late.
1:19.5	Julia, you are so manacled by chronology. It's just set. Linear time.
1:25.6	Linear time. I need to listen to the fella podcast again.
1:28.9	Unities of time and space.
1:30.2	Do not constrain in its events.
1:33.4	The Mexican writer-director, Guillermo del Toro, has been dreaming of making an adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein since he was a small child.
1:40.9	He's described being 11 years old, I think it was, and going with his parents to see
1:45.5	the James Whale, 1931, you know, the classic universal Frankenstein with flatheaded Boris Karloff
1:51.0	as the creature. And since then, he has been obsessed with not just Frankenstein itself,
1:56.7	but similar myths of transformation. If you look back at Del Toro's filmography, I think you see a lot of
2:01.9	proto-Franconstinian stories. It's always the relationship between humans and some sort of
	...

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