I'm Julia Turner, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest.

Knives Out is back with a new hot priest edition.

It's Wednesday, December 3rd, 2025, and on today's show, we're discussing Wake Up Dead Man, a Knives Out mystery, Ryan Johnson's latest Benoit Blank Joint.

The film is a Gothic who done it that trades the mansions of the previous installments for a church and stars Josh O'Connor as a young priest in a jam.

Then, the American Revolution, the sprawling new Ken Burns documentary

that tackles the founding of this country and poses questions large and small about why the

revolution happened and how profoundly it influenced all that followed. And finally, we'll take a look

at a New York magazine package that argues everything is getting stupider and a few provocative

pieces about the

crisis in American education. Steve McAff is here. Hello, Steve. Hey, Julia. Excited to discuss.

These are great topics. And it's always great to have Jamel on. Yeah, you're spoiling my next big reveal,

which is that Dana is out today. And in her stead, we have Jamel Vooey. Hi, Jamel.

Hello, hello. No worries about that reveal being spoiled. No problem. It was really a micro-spoiler,

so I don't know that people were tuning in for the suspense of that moment. But if you were,

apologies all around. Yeah, a third of our audience, poof, gone before we've experienced.

Let us begin with Wake Up Dead Man.

This third Benoit Blank Mystery features something unusual in a Hollywood film, I think.

A priest who is the hero and whose faith we are meant to take seriously.

The priest is played by Josh O'Connor, assigned to show up and help out at the upstate New York Church of Josh Brolin's fearsome Monsignor Jefferson Wicks.

He's a fire and brimstone guy with a maniacal glint in his eye.

Soon enough, Wicks ends up dead,

and all the cranks in the congregation,

...