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Slate Culture

Culture Gabfest Slate Plus Preview: Jad Abumrad Inquires How We Make the Gabfest

Slate Culture

Slate Podcasts

Arts, Tv & Film, Music

4.42K Ratings

🗓️ 22 October 2025

⏱️ 6 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This is a special preview of this week's Slate Plus episode. To get the full episode, another one like it every single week, and unlimited reading on Slate.com, subscribe to slate plus at Slate.com/cultureplus and help us keep the lights on. When you have Jad Abumrad in the studio, you don’t let him leave without squeezing as much quality audio from him as possible. So, inspired by Jad’s own natural curiosity, we dedicated our bonus episode this week to responding to one of the foremost practitioners of American radio’s questions about our little ol’ show. What follows is a wide-ranging conversation between Julia, Dana, Steve, and Jad about the current cultural landscape, the role of criticism, and the vital need for art in a time of inhumane political realities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, Steve here. We've got a very special teaser for you. It's a preview of this week's Culture GapFest bonus episode for Slate Plus subscribers.

0:09.7

Honestly, we thought this one was so good. We wanted to share a bit of it up top here to entice you over to the plus side.

0:16.0

We were joined by Jad Abimrad, the co-creator of Radio Lab, who has a new podcast out about the Nigerian

0:23.8

musician and activist, Velakuti. That podcast is incredible. Jad was a wonderful guest on our show.

0:30.4

He decided to stick around and interview us for our bonus episode about how we make the show,

0:35.9

our feelings about being critics in the current moment,

0:38.4

and a whole lot more.

0:40.1

So here we go.

0:41.0

Here's a little teaser, a little taste,

0:42.8

and if you like it,

0:43.7

please go subscribe at slate.com slash culture plus.

0:47.7

Thank you. Hello and welcome to a very special Slat-Bluz bonus episode of the Slate Culture Gab Fest.

1:03.7

Today, we seized the opportunity of having Chad Aberrott in our studio and having him cop to being a culture

1:11.2

gab fest listener and having him start to pepper us with questions about the show on his way out

1:16.0

the door. We nabbed him and have convinced him that in fact he should ask those questions on

1:21.8

Mike as our plus segment today. So we are going to get grilled by one of the foremost practitioners of American

1:29.1

radio about what the hell we're up to in here every week. Dad, take it away. What do you want to know?

1:36.0

I'm going to give you a series of big furry softballs because these are typically the kind of questions

1:43.7

that come out of my brain.

1:46.1

So, so I'm curious about how much culture you all consume in order to be so erudite and thoughtful

1:54.6

in your discussion of the culture and whether that ever becomes a chore.

1:58.3

Yeah, I would say, I mean, I'm sure any critic would say this sometimes. Like, there's just days that you get up and you think, I don't want to experience a new pop culture object that I have to have, you know, pulled together thoughts about in 24 hours. Like, it's a big cognitive burden, right? To sort of produce a piece of content that's finished on something with very little time to think about it. So I think

...

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