I'm Stephen Metcalf, and this is the Slate Culture Gapfest, Into the Woods edition.

It's Wednesday, December 1st, 2021.

On today's show, the movie Spencer has made Kristen Stewart into the frontrunner for best

actress. Her portrayal of Diana, Princess of Wales, is at the center of this beautiful

hallucinatory retelling. The movie also stars Sally Hawkins and Timothy Spall. It's in theaters

now, and you can watch it streaming. And then on Showtime, we have Yellow Jackets. It's a TV

show about a girls' high school soccer team whose plane crashes, stranding them in the

wilderness where they're forced into cannibalism. The show toggles back and forth between

their 19-month ordeal in the forest and their present-day middle-aged selves. It stars

Juliette Lewis and Christina Ricci and Melanie Linsky.

And finally, a giant, a true giant, not a cliche giant, but a real giant of musical theater.

And one of the great artists of the 20th century has died.

We discussed the unrivaled legacy of Stephen Sondheim with Slate's own Isaac Butler.

But joining me first is June Thomas, who's Poo-Bah,

what are you now? You're... I'm the senior managing Poo-Bah of all Poo-Bah entities.

I'm actually the senior managing producer of Slate Podcast and one of the hosts of working,

along with Isaac Butler and Karen Han. Magnificent. June, welcome back to the show. How great to have you as a full-on three-segment plus-plus-plus co-host. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. And of course, Dana Stevens is the film critic for Slate. Hey, Dana. Hey, Steve. Dana, how are we doing on Amazon these days, by the way? You know what? I forgot to obsessively check over the holiday weekend.

I was having so much fun that I forgot to narcissistically monitor my book sales.

But I did have one book-related anecdote to share, since this is now the segment of the show where we talk about my book, which is that in reading the audiobook aloud, which I've been doing over the past couple weeks going in and out to a sound studio, I am learning a lot about audiobooks and thinking a lot about audiobooks, and I'm going to talk about that in my endorsement segment this week. I feel like I've come to a new understanding of what it is that makes a great audiobook reader in hoping, you know, that I can become one myself of my own book.

Dana, as your publicist, please state clearly the title of your forthcoming book.

My book is called Camer Man. I will not say the long subtitle here, but it's a book about Buster

Keaton and about the years that he lived, which was 1895 to 1966, sort of a cultural history

...