The following podcast contains explicit language.

I'm Stephen Metcalf, and this is the Slate Culture Gapfest. Our Poetry is Bad Edition.

It's Wednesday, September 11th, 2019. On today's show, American Factory was a big

winner at Sundance. It's now a documentary on Netflix. It's also notable for being the first

one distributed by Barack and Michelle Obama. In addition to all that, it's a remarkable document

to the fate of the American experiment in the age of a global economy. It's an amazing movie.

And then Lana Del Rey has come a long way since being written off as a rich kid in a sued, a manufactured pop sensation. Her new record, Norman fucking Rockwell, is a triumph of both attitude and substance. And finally, get thee to a completed manuscript in which Dana returns from her stint at a nunnery

joining me today is Julia Turner who is a deputy managing editor of the LA Times hey Julia

hello hello and of course Dana Stevens the film critic for Slate magazine has returned

Dana hey hello blessing Stephen blessings on you

oh my god all right now is it really true when you put one of those habits on you can fly

we will get there but the whole episode just going to be like bad disrespectful nun jokes

I have an even worse joke if you want to hear it

you ready sure oh god okay did you hear the one about the factory documentary it's riveting

welcome back to civilization dana this is what the big city slickers are like.

I'm just excited to see Dana.

My tail is wagging.

In 2014, a Chinese auto glass company Fuyau bought up a shuttered GM factory in Dayton, Ohio.

This was, as I understand it from watching the documentary,

part public relations ploy, part deadly earnest investment in the American economy. Anyway,

it brought together Chinese management philosophies with an American workforce, though I should say

not every manager in the film is Chinese and not every worker is American. There's a mingling of both,

...