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The following podcast contains explicit language.

I'm Stephen Metcalfin.

This is the Slate Culture Gap Fest.

Dana's coming at you with a Big Wheel of Cheese edition.

It's Wednesday, January 29th, 2014, and very quickly, a happy birthday to Matthew.

On today's show, Philomena was a nice little Brit import, and then it got nominated for a Best Picture Award, so we went and saw it, and we'll discuss it.

And then Broad City was a nice little web series, and then it got picked up by Amy Polar and Comedy Central.

And finally, anxiety, is it an enabler, a crippler, a disease, or just the human condition?

Joining me today is the human condition herself, Julia Turner, who's also secondarily the deputy editor of Slate.

Hey, Julia.

Hello, Steve.

I feel like I should be responding in like 16 voices at once, like those throat singers who can sing multiple notes if I am, in fact, the whole human condition. But I can't do that. So hi, Steve. Oh, you know you can, human condition. And joining us as well today is the merely human, Dana Stevens. Hey, Dana. Hey, Steve. I am merely human. I should say, in addition to being merely human, you're also the film critic for a Slate magazine. Yes, such is my name. She's also apple-cheeked and fresh out of Sundance. The visions of indie, I don't even know what they do in Sundance. Visions of snowflakes dancing in the head. Yeah, I wouldn't call myself Apple-cheeked. I'm sort of withered from exhaustion, but yes, it was great.

All right. Well, let me throw some verbosity at you and ask you to respond.

Philomena is the new movie from director Stephen Frears, he of the Queen, My Beautiful Laundrette, high fidelity on and on.

It's based on the book, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee by a British journal named Martin

Sixth Smith. It stars Dame Judy Dench as an Irish Catholic woman whose toddler son was taken from her

by the church and given up for adoption pretty much against her will 50 years earlier. She's now

...