Culture Gabfest - The Godfather Is Great, but Is It Cake?
Slate Culture Feed
Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2022
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, the panel begins by revisiting the iconic film The Godfather in celebration of its 50th anniversary. Then, the panel answers the question Is It Cake? as they cut into Netflix’s newest hit. Finally, the panel is joined by Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of Memphis, Jeremy Orosz, to discuss forensic musicology and what counts as musical plagiarism—which he wrote about for Slate, using Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” lawsuit as a case study.
In Slate Plus, the panel discusses reverse thematic aversions, or “thematic kinks.”
Email us at culturefest@slate.com.
Endorsements
Dana: For all the videophiles out there, The Coppola Restoration of The Godfather from 2008, which includes all three parts of the trilogy.
Allegra: New sad girl indie rocker, Leanna Firestone, and her album Forward / Slash which speaks to your inner teen. More specifically, the song “Google Translate / poppies.”
Steve: Julius Aglinskas’ album Daydreamer, which he did with avant-garde experimental music collective, Apartment House.
Podcast production by Cameron Drews. Production assistance by Nadira Goffe.
Outro music is "You Know What I Want" by Staffan Carlen
Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts, a bonus segment in each episode of the Culture Gabfest, full access to Slate's journalism on Slate.com, and more. Sign up now at slate.com/cultureplus.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm Stephen Meccaff and this is the Slate culture guest. |
| 0:13.2 | The Godfather is great, but is it cake edition? |
| 0:16.4 | It's Wednesday, April 6th, 2022. |
| 0:19.6 | On today's show, the Godfather, I mean, what can you say about it? |
| 0:22.4 | It's now 50 years old. |
| 0:23.8 | It's Coppola's absolute masterpiece, surely one of the most iconic and influential American |
| 0:28.7 | movies of all time. |
| 0:30.0 | In every respect we're going to get into it, we'll assess the legacy of a giant almost |
| 0:34.6 | without rival. |
| 0:36.3 | And then, yeah, but is it cake? |
| 0:37.9 | At the top of Netflix rankings is a wonderfully enane. |
| 0:41.4 | I guess wonderfully enane. |
| 0:42.4 | I guess I want to shade that word a little bit as we discuss it. |
| 0:46.4 | Let's just say enane competition show, no one respects, and everyone loves. |
| 0:51.2 | And finally, did do a leap at plagiarize a 2017 song for her number one hit, Levitating, |
| 0:58.0 | or maybe a 1979 song, or was it a 1980 song? |
| 1:01.4 | We discussed the many vagaries of music plagiarism with Jeremy Oros, a professor of music theory |
| 1:08.3 | at the University of Memphis. |
| 1:10.1 | We're joined today by Allegra Frank, senior editor at Slate, Allegra, welcome back to the |
| 1:14.6 | show. |
| 1:15.6 | Hi. |
| 1:16.6 | Thank you for having me. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

