Culture Gabfest - One Oscar After Another Edition
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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2026
⏱️ 63 minutes
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Summary
On this week’s show, Dana and Steve are joined by long-time FOP Isaac Butler (and author of the forthcoming book The Perfect Moment: God, Sex, Art, and the Birth of America's Culture Wars.) They step into this week’s cultural trenches by way of an animatronic beaver den in Pixar’s Hoppers. Does the kooky eco-romp revive Pixar from its much-discussed slump? They discuss.
Next, they step to the frontlines of middle-age malaise in the new HBO limited series DTF St. Louis, a sex comedy and meditation on male friendship mashed up with a murder mystery starring Jason Bateman, David Harbour, and Linda Cardellini.
Finally, they debrief on the various battles for golden men in a recap and analysis of the 98th Academy Awards. Are the Oscars a real measure of artistic value? What do this year’s ceremony and winners say about the state of cinema? Why are they so long? Your questions answered here.
In an exclusive bonus episode for Slate Plus subscribers, the panel takes up a recent excerpt from Michael Pollan’s new book A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness.
Endorsements
Isaac: An earlier instance of Jason Bateman playing sinister, the 2015 thriller The Gift, directed by Joel Edgerton. (Also, don’t forget to pre-order The Perfect Moment: God, Sex, Art, and the Birth of America's Culture Wars)
Steve: The work of the recently deceased philosopher Jürgen Habermas. As a starting off point, read the Wikipedia page of his early work The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.
Dana: For more beaver-related slapstick, the exceedingly low-budget 2022 debut—produced for just $150,000— of director Mike Cheslik Hundreds of Beavers.
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Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch. Production assistance by Daniel Hirsch.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Dana Stevens, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest won Oscar after another edition. |
| 0:15.9 | It's Wednesday, March 18, 26, and this week we will be discussing, first off, Hoppers, the new animated film from Pixar about a nature-loving college student who jacks her human consciousness into the body of a beaver avatar style in order to rally the local animal population into resisting human destruction. |
| 0:33.5 | Next, we'll discuss DTF St. Louis, a limited series from HBO Max. That's a combination murder mystery, sex comedy, and bittersweet drama about male friendship. |
| 0:42.4 | It's a curious sort of show, maybe even more curious than an animatronic beaver movie, |
| 0:47.1 | and it stars Jason Bateman, Linda Cardalini, David Harbour, and others will discuss. |
| 0:52.4 | Finally, last Sunday, we all watched the Oscar ceremony, capping off |
| 0:55.5 | what, in my opinion, anyway, was an exceptional year at the movies. What did we make of this |
| 1:00.0 | latest installment of Hollywood's venerable yet absurd annual celebration of itself? |
| 1:05.4 | Joining me this week is Isaac Butler, venerable friend of the podcast, frequent contributor to Slate |
| 1:10.0 | on all things drama and acting and theater-related, other topics as well, general friend of the podcast, frequent contributor to Slate on all things drama and acting and theater related, other topics as well, and author of the |
| 1:15.1 | wonderful 2022 book, The Method and the upcoming book, The Perfect Moment. |
| 1:19.3 | Give me the subtitle, Isaac. |
| 1:20.7 | The subtitle, it's permanent now because the book comes out very soon in June. |
| 1:24.2 | The subtitle was changed many times, but it is now, the perfect moment. God, |
| 1:30.5 | sex, art, and the birth of the cultural wars. I mean, I don't mean to laugh, but did you |
| 1:37.2 | determine which of the world's religions is the true one? It sounds or like... Yeah, no, definitely. |
| 1:42.3 | Yeah, okay. It sounds like it has all the answers yeah |
| 1:45.3 | no uh yeah so we finally have a subtitle which is great and we have a release date it comes out of |
| 1:49.4 | the end of june you can pre-order it today from your favorite bookstore and i uh beg you to do |
| 1:54.8 | so because pre-orders count more and more year after year yeah pre-orders the more i read about |
| 1:59.8 | publish the state of publishing |
| 2:01.1 | right now, you can basically save a book by pre-ordering it. Indeed. And that also means that you get a |
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