The following podcast contains explicit language.

Just one quick note here before we get this week's show rolling.

If you wrote to us wanting details on the live culture gadfest,

it's set for Monday, May 17th at Housing Works here in New York City.

And Julia will have all you need to know about getting tickets next week.

I'm Stephen Metcalfton. This is the Slate Culture Gab Fest, Ulala edition. This is also the daily podcast from Slate.com for Wednesday, April 14th, 2010.

On today's program, David Simon's new TV show, Tremay, the late punk impresario

Malcolm McLaren, and checking in once again with the wonderful Tina Faye. Joining me today,

our Slate's deputy editor, Julia Turner. Hello, Julia. Hi, Steve. And our film critic, Dana Stevens. Hey,

Dana. Hey, Stephen. Guys, it's great to see you. Great to be back around the table. Nice to be here without an iPad.

Let's dig right in. Really, Julie, I think literally no accolade that didn't attach to David

Simon in the aftermath of The Wire, his previous TV show on HBO. It ran for five seasons. It was, you know, filled with epic grandeur.

It was a big canvas. It engaged deeply, thickly, descriptively with the city of Baltimore.

And now he has to follow it up. He's created a television show about the city of New Orleans and

the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It's also

thickly descriptive. It also has a depth. It's got ensemble acting. Some actors from the wire

appear in this show. At the center of it isn't crime, or so far at least, we should say premiered Sunday night on HBO.

At the center of it isn't cops and robbers and isn't Baltimore, the city that David

Simon knew intimately from his time as a journalist there. What do you make of his attempt

to move his style of filmmaking to a new city and a new subject?

Well, I, like all of the wire junkies out there, is totally fascinated to see what David Simon would do with another city.

And the subject itself, the idea of returning to Katrina at the moment where so many citizens are coming back or making the decision about whether to come back and where the fate of the metropolis really hangs in

...