Culture Gabfest - Mad as Hell
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 August 2020
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode, Steve, Dana, and Julia discuss a recent video of twins’ listening to Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight” that went viral. Then, the panelists talk about John M. Barry’s The Great Influenza. Finally, they take on this week’s comfort watch—Network.
In Slate Plus, the hosts break down The Daily’s recent two-part series on cancel culture.
Endorsements:
Dana: The accurate lime cordial recipe!
Julia: Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld
Steve: “Dickens in Brooklyn” by Jay Neugeboren in the New York Review of Books
Podcast production by Cameron Drews. Production assistance by Rachael Allen.
Slate Plus members get a bonus segment on the Culture Gabfest each episode, and access to exclusive shows like Dana Stevens’ classic movies podcast Flashback. Sign up now to listen and support our work.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Stephen Maccalf and this is the Sli culture gap fest, Mad as Hell edition. |
| 0:13.8 | It's Wednesday, August 19th, 2020. |
| 0:16.7 | On today's show, we react to the sweet and really quite euphoric YouTube sensation known as reaction videos. |
| 0:22.9 | A couple of young guys who have never listened to rock and roll hear some of its iconic anthems for the first time, and they react to them. |
| 0:29.5 | And then the great influenza by John Barry was just too on point, too apposite, not to read and discuss. |
| 0:35.4 | It tells the story of the misnamed Spanish flu of |
| 0:37.7 | 1918, which killed between 50 and 100 million people. It also tells the story of the medical |
| 0:42.7 | science that arose in its wake. And finally, it was Julius picked this week for the now, I think, |
| 0:48.7 | completely misnamed comfort movie. It's become the discomfort movie, really. And she went dark. She went really dark. |
| 0:58.7 | She picked the Iracular 1970s classic network, Julia. |
| 1:04.4 | Actually darker than any of Dana's picks about Los Angeles and we getting murdered in the Mediterranean or getting murdered by a tornado. |
| 1:13.3 | Right. |
| 1:13.6 | It's one thing to slit one person's throat here or there. |
| 1:17.3 | It's another thing to take a whole society over the cliff like a bunch of lemmings. |
| 1:22.6 | Anyway, we'll get to it. |
| 1:24.2 | Joining me today is Julia Turner, who is the deputy managing editor at the LA Times. Hey, Julia. |
| 1:29.2 | Hello, hello. And of course, Dana Stevens is the film critic of Slate.com. Dana, hey. |
| 1:34.6 | Hey. Hey. Let's dig right in. Tim and Fred Williams are a 21-year-old-ish twins from Gary |
| 1:42.9 | Indiana. They've made a series of endearingly amateur |
| 1:45.3 | YouTube videos of them listening to songs for the first time. They went viral recently with a |
| 1:50.5 | clip of them listening to In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins' 1981 song. It's notable for its spooky |
| 1:56.5 | atmospherics, almost sounds like a horror movie soundtrack at first, this kind of aching vocal. |
... |
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