The following podcast contains explicit language.

I'm Stephen Meckheff, and this is the Slate Culture Gap Fest, Independence Duh, edition.

It's Wednesday, June 29,, 2016 on today's show.

Independence Day Resurgence is the much unawayed sequel to the old Roland Emmerich Blockbuster.

Is it every bit the bloated cynical mess the critics say it is?

Dana loved it, I think.

Does that make me unblooded and cynical?

Sveld and optimistic.

Yeah, exactly.

And then, Angels in America, the magnificent theater epic by Tony Kirchner, widely hailed at the time as a total masterpiece, now turns 25.

Slate has produced an oral history of the play.

We discuss its birth, its life, its glorious afterlife with Slate's culture editor Dan Coist. And finally, Judith Butler was once the most ridiculed academic in America. She was a stand-in for everyone's dislike of jargon and obscurity for obscurity's sake, etc. Now New York Magazine has anointed her the gender queer profit for our times.

I should say the additionally interesting thing about our discussion about Judith Butler

will be the fact that Danny Stevens was her thesis advisory, correct?

Yes, I was. And as a result, I was one of the many people who gave the author of this big

Butler profile in New York Magazine some background material. I sat down with the author, as did a few other people I know who studied with her. And we were never directly quoted in the piece, but we were sort of talking about what it was like to be her student. Yeah. All right. Well, we take you out of the shadows of deep background. Deep bro. Emerges. Yeah. So, Julia, before we proceed, we must have some business, I would think.

Yes, we are doing a live show at the Mount, Edith Wharton's Mance, in Lenox, Massachusetts

on August 4th.

I believe there are still tickets available for that at slate.com slash live.

Please come join us.

I was there when I was on

vacation last week, not exactly at the mount, but in Lennox and in that area. It's so freaking beautiful. If you've never been, you should go, make a weekend of it. Come see us. It'll be really fun. Also, I should note for our Slate Plus members that for this week's bonus segment, I have kicked Dana and Steve out and invited Dan Quays and Willa Paskin in to discuss the Game of Thrones finale, how the show has changed in its most recent season and whether it's any good and why it's so compelling.

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