The following podcast contains explicit language.

I'm June Thomas. On the next afterward, I'll be talking with David Troyer about his new book, Res Life.

We'll discuss how casinos transformed some reservations, whether being Indian is a racial, national, or cultural identity, and why preserving tribal languages matters.

This Thursday on the Slate Daily podcast.

I'm Stephen McCampin. This is the Slate Culture Gab Fest.

Silence is my breakup album edition. It's Wednesday, February 15th,

2012. On today's program, the death of pop diva Whitney Houston with Slate's own Jody Rosen. Jody

then sticks around to talk about love songs and breakup songs, the occasion being we're

recording on Valentine's Day. And finally, as we work our way through Oscar-nominated movies, we're talking about Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris.

Joining me today, our Slate's deputy editor, Julia Turner. Julia, is it possible that I forgot to properly say hello last week?

Someone said this on the Facebook page, and of course, you know, my heart beats like a sparrow when I'm in the studio talking to you, too. And so the whole thing goes by in a blur. But it's entirely possible. I didn't say, hello, Julia. Do you want to say hello twice? Yeah. Hello, Julia. Hi, Steve. Hey, Julia. Hi, Steve. Dana. Dana. Hey, Dana. Stephen. Lovely.

And Jody, I'm afraid you only get a one for today because you weren't here last week. But you could say that I neglected to say hello to you last week. So, hello, Jody. Hi, Steve. Hey, Jody. Hi. Steve, before we start, can I make an announcement? Please. Okay. the Slade Culture Gab Fest is going to Los Angeles to do the first ever California

Gab Fest.

On March 20th, we're going to be taping a live show, and we hope you will come and join us.

Stay tuned for details.

We'll have full ticketing and location and event information on next week's show. Also,

next week's show is going to be the long-awaited granola off. So lots of exciting things to

tune in for next week. All right, Steve. Jody, I have to, I have to admit that until I heard this

news and I started working my way around the internet to prep for this subject, I had

almost completely forgotten how big Whitney Houston really was. Whitney Houston sold, you get estimates

ranging from about 170 million albums to about 200 million albums. At one point, she had seven

consecutive number one records. She had charted seven times at number one, beating a record by the Beatles.

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