Culture Gabfest - Ryan Gosling’s Pet Rock Edition
Slate Culture Feed
Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 25 March 2026
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Dana, Julia (fresh from the launch of her new media venture L.A. Material), and guest host Dan Kois set their gaze to the heavens with a discussion of the lost-in-space adventure yarn Project Hail Mary. Based on the book by Andy Weir and directed by genre movie savants Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the sci-fi blockbuster stars Ryan Gosling and a big rock creature puppet.
Next, they hop across the pond for the launch of SNL UK, the British revamp of the venerable American comedy institution. Slate UK contributor and author of Deep Down, Imogen West-Knights joins to share her two pence on the show’s local reception.
Finally, the panel turns to Dan Kois’s epic, 8,500 word Slate essay on… bar soap. His opus—or “soapus," if you will— makes a persuasive case for why bar soap is a superior form of foam.
In an exclusive Slate Plus bonus segment, the gang gets into a listener question about analog media.
Endorsements
Julia: In addition to subscribing to L.A. Material, the great American junk food that is the corndog—the vibes and graphic design of Hot Dog on a Stick at the Santa Monica Pier are swell but seeking listener recommendations for the very best place to get a corndog.
Dan: For some '"higher gossip " and a bit of 1800s history, the book Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages by Phyllis Rose.
Dana: The work of voice actor Ray Porter in the audiobook of Project Hail Mary and the interview Porter gives on the book podcast Off the Shelf.
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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, Ryan Gosling's Pet Rock Edition. |
| 0:15.0 | It's Wednesday, March 25th, 26, and this week we will be discussing, first off, Project Hail Mary, the new movie from |
| 0:22.5 | the directing team Chris Miller and Phil Lord that stars Ryan Gosling as a stranded space traveler |
| 0:27.3 | who teams up with an alien to save both their respective planets from the starlight-eating |
| 0:31.8 | microbe that's threatening the galaxy. Project Hail Mary is based on a mega best-selling novel |
| 0:36.8 | of the same title by the sci-fi author Andy Weir, and it had an opening weekend that confirms it as the first real box office hit of 2026. |
| 0:44.9 | Next, we'll discuss the premiere of a brand-new UK version of Saturday Night Live that debuted last weekend. |
| 0:50.5 | Will the venerable format of a live late-night sketch show with a different celebrity host and musical guest each week translate to England's sceptered aisle? |
| 0:57.9 | We'll discuss with Slate Rider and Native Brit Imogen West Nights. |
| 1:02.3 | And finally, back in February, Slate ran a long reported feature on a subject that might not seem to warrant 8,500 words of coverage, the history and future of bar soap. But when Dan |
| 1:12.8 | Cois is at the helm, believe you me, that piece is well worth reading and well worth discussing. |
| 1:17.6 | So we will be talking about scrubbing oneself with liquid versus bar soap for our third topic today. |
| 1:24.7 | Joining me this week is Dan Coise, a writer whose relationship to Slate is so complex |
| 1:28.8 | and ever-changing. It's like the sun-eating microbes in Project Hail Mary. I think now you would just |
| 1:34.8 | be a Slate contributor, right, Dan? You've been a writer, editor. I'm just Slate's best-smelling |
| 1:39.8 | contributor, yes. The Cois line. That's how we have to study your dynamic relationship. That's right. |
| 1:46.6 | And back with us, as you hear, is Julia Turner, who we've been introducing on this show for the past |
| 1:51.3 | couple years as a fellow at L.A.'s Annenberg School of Journalism. She is still that. But as of last week, |
| 1:56.9 | she has a fancy new job description as well. Julia, would you call yourself the editor of L.A. |
| 2:01.7 | Material, the publisher, the, I don't know, Queen Bee? I'm the editor-in-chief, baby. Editor-in-chief, |
| 2:08.3 | co-founder of L.A. Material. All right, Julia, give us the pitch. What is L.A. Material exactly? |
| 2:12.8 | L.A. Material is a new local news outlet for Los Angeles. We have a very small team of extremely excellent journalists and writers and people from Hollywood and smart brains who I admire, who are making a daily weekday newsletter for and about L.A. and producing big swing journalism. We've also got a community where we're kind of |
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