Culture Gabfest - Is the Office Spinoff Good Cringe or Bad Cringe Edition
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 September 2025
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s show, Steve, Dana, and Julia crack open the latest edition of The Paper, a new mockumentary set in the The Office universe. They debate whether the tried and true sitcom formula still delivers and assess its portrayal of local journalism.
Next, they share their feelings about two couples who are terrible at sharing theirs in Splitsville, the marriage farce created and starring Kyle Marvin and Michael Angelo Covino with Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona. Finally, the heterofatalist discourse continues in their conversation with Slate music critic Carl Wilson about Man’s Best Friend, the latest release from the spritely, cheeky, and controversy-stirring Sabrina Carpenter.
In an exclusive Slate Plus bonus episode, the panel takes up the business of cultural criticism in a discussion inspired by the recent New York Magazine piece “Do Media Organizations Even Want Cultural Criticism.”
Email us your thoughts at culturefest@slate.com.
Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch. Production assistance by Daniel Hirsch.
Endorsements:
Julia: The very Julia Turner-coded board games Hues and Cues.
Carl: The documentary Sunday Best about Ed Sullivan by the late music journalist Sacha Jenkins and CMAT’s new album Euro-Country and the video playlist that goes with it.
Steve: The book Computer Power and Human Reason by Joseph Weizenbaum.
Dana: Astor Piazolla's "Otoño Porteño," played by the Neave Trio.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Dana Stevens, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest, is the Office spin-off good cringe or bad cringe edition. |
| 0:17.9 | It's Wednesday, September 10th, 2025, and this week we're going to be discussing, |
| 0:21.8 | first of all, The Paper, a new comedy series on Peacock that comes from the creator of the American |
| 0:26.7 | version of the office about the staff of a struggling local newspaper in Toledo, Ohio, |
| 0:32.3 | Splitsville, a movie about two couples who engage in a sort of round-robin of non-traditional monogamy. And finally, |
| 0:39.9 | Sabrina Carpenter has a new album out after last year's Grammy-winning and massively successful |
| 0:44.5 | short and sweet. It's called Man's Best Friend. It's already caused some controversy and also |
| 0:49.3 | some irresistible toe-tapping. We will have Slate's music critic Carl Wilson on to discuss. But right now, I'm joined by LA from |
| 0:56.9 | Julia Turner, who's a fellow at the Annenberg School of Journalism. Hey, Julia. Hello, hello. And as |
| 1:02.2 | always, by critic, writer, man about town, Stephen Metcalfe. Hi, Steve. Hey, you did, I. So let's dig in. |
| 1:10.2 | The NBC sitcom The Office was created by Greg Daniels. |
| 1:14.0 | It ran for nine seasons from 2005 to 2013. |
| 1:17.8 | And during that time, it became a beloved TV staple. |
| 1:20.7 | It adapted the single camera format and the excruciatingly awkward workplace setting of the British original. |
| 1:26.8 | In Daniels' new show, the paper |
| 1:28.2 | co-created with Michael Komen, who's a former writer for Conan O'Brien and one of the producers of |
| 1:32.9 | Nathan for You, the Dunder-Mifflin paper company has been bought out by a larger corporation. |
| 1:38.5 | Half of their office space is used for selling toilet paper, the other half for putting out |
| 1:42.6 | a moribund local newspaper called the Toledo |
| 1:45.0 | Truth Teller. The Truth Teller is one of those now all too common zombie newspapers that |
| 1:49.8 | exists mainly to reprint wire service stories and run clickbait ads. But when new editor-in-chief |
| 1:55.8 | Ned rolls in, played by Donal Gleason, he has big plans to turn the paper into a legitimate local news source. |
... |
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