Culture Gabfest - The Slate Culture Gift Guide
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 14 November 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
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Summary
Hark, the holiday season is upon us—and with it the most solemn of festive traditions: a gift guide! In this video and podcast special, Slate hosts Dana Stevens, Chris Molanphy, and Willa Paskin beam-in from their collective hearths to deliver unto the internet their favorite gifts for culture lovers this holiday. In addition to sharing gifts, they also discuss the cultural artifact that is the “holiday gift guide,” and its history going back to the early 20th century, up to the modern day. See the entirety of the 1910 gift guide Our Special Holiday Gift-Book from Greenhut-Siegel Cooper, and Esquire’s ultra-mod gift guide from 1961.
Check out our gift recommendations below:
Dana Stevens’ Cozy Movie Night-In:
The Salbree Collapsible Silicone Microwave Popcorn Popper & Amish Country Popcorn
The Adventures of Antoine Doinel, The Criterion Collection Box Set
Chris Molanphy’s Hit Parade Collection:
Willa Paskin’s Fruit-Themed Trompe-l'œil Housewares:
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, GabFest listeners. It's Dana Stevens here, bringing you a little pre-holiday special. |
| 0:04.6 | This is the Slate Culture Gift Guide. I sat down with Willa Paskin of Dakota Ring and Chris Malanfi of |
| 0:10.0 | Hit Parade to discuss how we feel about gift guides and the history of the form before recommending a few gifts ourselves. |
| 0:16.8 | My gifts in particular are all arranged around a movie theme, which may be of interest to you as Culture Gap Fest listeners. |
| 0:22.5 | This is also something of an experiment for Slate. |
| 0:24.5 | You're listening to the audio, but there's also a video version of this gift guide where you can see me and Chris and Willa smiling at each other as we show each other our goofy gift choices and talk about the history of gift guides, including some digging into interesting items we would have purchased had we been alive back in the 1910s and 20s. |
| 0:42.8 | If you want to see our smiling faces, you can head to slate.com slash culture gift guide to watch the video version and see links to the items we're talking about. |
| 0:51.6 | All right. Enjoy the show and we'll talk to you all next week. |
| 1:00.9 | Music we're talking about. All right. Enjoy the show and we'll talk to you all next week. Hi and welcome to the Slate Culture Gift Guide. I'm Willa Paskin, the host of Decodering, |
| 1:06.2 | and I'm joined today by Slate's film critic and the host of the Culture Gab Fest, Dana Stevens. |
| 1:10.8 | Hi, Dana. Hey, hey, Willa. And Chris Malanfi, the host of the Culture Gab Fest, Dana Stevens. Hi, Dana. |
| 1:11.5 | Hey, hey, Willa. |
| 1:12.4 | And Chris Malanfi, the host of Hit Parade. |
| 1:15.3 | Hi, Chris. |
| 1:16.0 | Hey, Willa. |
| 1:16.6 | How are you? |
| 1:17.5 | Chris, can you explain why we're all here like some crossover, MCU, special, spectacular to talk about gifts? |
| 1:27.1 | What are we doing here? I like to think of us as a Voltron |
| 1:29.5 | that have joined forces, but, you know, pick your metaphor. Sure. So with the holiday season upon us, |
| 1:35.5 | we thought that we would gather to bring you one of the seasons most cherished, most solemn |
| 1:41.1 | traditions, a gift guide. Today we're going to share with you some of our favorite gifts. |
| 1:46.3 | Nothing too expensive. We kept it around the $100 mark. So hopefully there's something here for |
... |
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