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Hello, I'm Julia Turner, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest, Everybody's Dead Edition.

This is also the daily podcast from slate.com for Wednesday, July 1st, 2009.

On today's program, we're going to talk about Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, who died last week.

Also, some other lesser lights who died last week, including Farah Fawcett, Billy Mays, and Ed McMahon.

And finally, the state of the modern obituary. Joining me today are a Slate's film critic, Dana Stevens.

Hi, Dana. Hi, Julia. And a first-time appearance on the Slate Culture Gab Fest, our ad critic, Seth Stevenson, who also covered the Michael Jackson trial for us several years ago.

Hi, Seth.

Hi, Julia.

So we're going to open by talking about the news last week that Michael Jackson died at the age of 50.

And I want to start, Seth, by asking you what you thought

when you heard the news. You are the only person on this call, and in fact, the only person I know

who's actually spent multiple weeks in the same room as Michael Jackson when you covered his trial

several years ago. And I just wondered what you made of it.

Well, in addition to being saddened by the news, I was a little bit shocked that this didn't happen sooner.

I think everyone in the press who was covering the trial was sort of amazed at how frail Michael looked all the time when he was in the courtroom.

Every time he arrived and walked down the center aisle of the courtroom, he's sort of half limping and clutching at his sides and breathing shallowly.

And he just looked a wreck throughout the entire trial. And we all speculated on what his health

issues were and what sort of prescription drugs he might be addicted to and just what was going

on with him because he just looked deathly ill at all times.

...