The Slate Culture Gab Fest is brought to you by Audible.com, a leading provider of spoken audio

information and entertainment. Listen to audiobooks whenever and wherever you want. Get a free book

when you sign up for a 30-day free trial at Audiblepodcast.com slash culture fest. And by

stamps.com. Buy and print official U.S. postage using your own computer and printer and have your postal carrier pick up the packages.

Sign up for a no-risk trial and get up to $55 in free postage when you visit stamps.com and use the promo code CultureFest.

The following podcast contains explicit language.

I'm Stephen McHaff, and this is the Slate Culture Gap Fest. We're Not Here to Fish Edition.

It's Wednesday, October 16th, 2013. On today's show, the new thriller Captain Phillips. It stars Tom Hanks. It's thoughtful. It has no CGI. And it's being raved upon. And then does the SAT essay section turn high school students into little BS artists? Something has to, right? And then finally, we discussed the delightful announcement that Alice Monroe is the recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Joining me today is Slate's deputy editor, Julia Turner.

Hello, Julia.

Hi, Steve.

And, of course, Slate's film critic, Dana Stevens.

Hey, Dana.

Hey, Steve.

Before we dig in, Julia, am I right in thinking we have one piece of business?

We do. We have an announcement or a perpetuation of a recent announcement, which is that

Hang Up and Listen are still coming to do a live show in New York on November 11th, a special

Veterans Day edition of the Hang Up and Listen Sports podcast. And they have a special guest that

night, Bob Costas, who recently made news by

proclaiming during, I think, Sunday night football that the name of the Washington NFL team

was offensive and should be changed. He probably was just saying that to pander to the Slate

position in advance of his appearance on the Slate podcast, or perhaps from a deeply held belief.

...