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I'm Stephen Metcalf, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest Commodified Girl Power edition.

This is also the daily podcast from slate.com for Wednesday, March 11th, 2009.

On today's program, we're going to talk about more depressed superheroes.

Women writers are their reputations artificially depressed, and Dora the Explorer, a depressing makeover.

Joining me today are Slate's deputy editor, Julia Turner, Julia, not depressed, I hope, today.

Feeling very peppy.

You look at it.

And our film critic, Dana Stevens, hey Dana.

Hey, how you do with me? Dana, you're always depressed like me. We were grad students. You look at. And our film critic, Dana Stevens, hey Dana. Hey, how you do with you?

Dana, you're always depressed like me.

We were grad students.

We got advanced degrees.

We carry it with us. Yeah. Speaking of grad students, we have a little bit of housekeeping to attend to before we jump into our first topic. Last time, we put out a call to our readership among the adjunct professors of America and asked them to help us figure out what was the literary reference that Dana had in mind

when she considered the plight of the octamom.

She described a mythical literary beast who was forever giving birth and then having babies

crawl back into her room and possibly also eating them.

I can't remember all the details.

But you are amazing listenership responded in force.

We got so many wonderful emails from so many of you with different possible horrible mythical mom beasts,

...