The following podcast contains explicit language.

I'm Dana Stevens, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest Still There Edition.

It's Wednesday, September 26, 2018, and on today's show, the podcast Serial has returned for its third season, and this time it's deconstructing the justice system in a single city, Cleveland. We're spending the whole season in Cleveland Courthouse. Then we will talk about the recent spate of redemption essays from disgraced men like John Hockenberry and Gian Giam Meshi that have run in Harper's and in the New York Review of Books, leading to the firing of Ian Baruma, the editor of the New York Review of Books. And finally, Forever is the new series from Amazon Video that stars Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph as a couple whose bucolic but boring existence is shaken up by an extremely high-con. Stephen Meckhaff is out this week,

but I am joined, thank goodness, by my regular co-host Julia Turner, Slate's editor. Hi, Julia. Hi,

Dana. And we also are joined this week, excitingly, by Gabriel Roth, who is one of the hosts

of Slate's parenting podcast, Mom and Dad are Fighting, and also the editorial director of Slate Plus.

Hey, Gabe. Hello. I also just have to interject to say that last week's episode was very fun. You guys did a lot of

melifluous reading aloud of things. And the quote that Sam Anderson read in endorsements,

the Annie Dillard quote about the weasel getting carried locked into the sky. That was my high school yearbook quote.

How did you guys read that fucking passage from Annie Dillard when I was not here? How did you have such a good high school yearbook quote? What the hell? I was a little, whatever. Some person smarter and wiser than me pointed me to that text. Wait. I can't claim credit. I've always been told that your high school yearbook quote was a line from the song Car by Built to Spill.

They're both on there. Don't worry. This is the week of going back and checking the yearbook, and they're both on there. Glad to hear it. I don't know if we had quotes in my high school yearbook. I have no memory. I've blocked out so much of high school. Did you have them be able? No, I grew up in England where we don't have sort of paraphernalia around like enjoying or celebrating your high school

experience. I've blocked out so much of high school. Did you have them be real? No, I grew up in England where we don't have

sort of paraphernalia around like enjoying or celebrating your high school experience. It's meant to be something that you kind of trudge through and then leave as quickly as possible. Yeah. There's no paraphernalia? There's no yearbooks. There's no prom. There's no homecoming. What happens at the end? A levels and then out.

Yeah.

You don't even throw your mortarboard hat in the air?

No, no of that.

Oh my God.

You finish and then out? Yeah. You don't even throw your mortarboard hat in the

year? No, no, no of that. You just, you finish and then you're like, I am fucking glad to be out of here.

Is there even a graduation ceremony? No. It's just schools out for the summer? Yeah, you do your exams and then like you don't have to go back.

Wow. How does that change childhood and teen movies?

I feel like it, yes, we don't have the cinematic tradition of all of the teen movies that revolve around these big, like, prom night, and are you going to be in the backseat of the car or whatever?

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