The following podcast contains explicit language.

I'm Dana Stevens, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest, Talkin-Traz edition.

It's Wednesday, March 27th, 2019, and on today's show, Jordan Peel's new horror film

Us is the follow-up to his Get Out from a couple years ago and is already a massive, critical,

and box office hit, we will discuss. Then, Shrill is a new comedy from Hulu that's based on the book

Shrill Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West. It's about navigating friends, romance, and the publishing industry as an overweight woman.

And finally, we'll talk about the book, Dreyer's English, an utterly correct guide to clarity and style with the author, Benjamin Dreyer.

You might remember that I endorsed this book a few weeks ago, and we're very excited to have Benjamin coming into the studio to talk about it with us today.

Stephen is out this week. He is traipsing around the northern Spanish Galician coast. I'm incredibly jealous. And he's going to be writing on it, apparently. So maybe we can debrief him on that when he comes back. But as usual, I am joined by the deputy managing editor for arts and culture at the L.A LA Times, Julia Turner. Hey, Julia, welcome back.

Hello, thank you so much for holding down the fort last week when I had to take my kids on a whale watching field trip.

I'm glad to be back.

Tell me about the whales you saw?

We saw a gray whale surface many times barnacled up close and a humpback whale breach in the distance.

And it's a speckled fluke to disappear under the sea and so many dolphins that everyone was bored in a very Californian fashion you grew over

the dolphins very quickly yeah it's like oh yon grapefruit tree in your yard boo dolphins everywhere

our closest undersea compatriot. Oh, well, there they go. Also, joining me in Slate's Brooklyn studio this week is Slate's beloved TV critic, the host of the Decoder Ring podcast and beloved friend of the program, BFOP, Willa Paskin. Hey, Willa. Hi. We should just say that the new decoder ring is just out. I haven't heard it yet, but I just,

I have to give our listeners the title by way of promotion, because how can you not want to

listen to an episode entitled Truck Nuts?

Please listen. It is about Truck Nuts.

I have listened, and it is great. It is everything you would want from a Decoder Ring episode

called Truck Nuts.

The movie Us blew past expectations this weekend with a massive opening weekend of $70 million at the domestic box office.

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