The following podcast contains explicit language.

I'm Stephen Meckhaff, and this is the Slate Culture Gap Test,

To Kagan Michael Key or Not To Kee edition.

It's Wednesday, August 9th, 2017.

On today's show, the public theater's new production

of Hamlet stars Oscar Isaac and Michael Key of our title. We were very, very lucky to go see it. We'll be

discussing with Isaac Butler. And then Friends from College is a new Netflix streamer. It stars

here he is again, Kegan Michael Key, Fred Savage, Annie Parisse, among several others. It's an ensemble comedy about a group of old Harvard classmates hitting 40. Finally, we're joined by Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel to discuss his new book on Prague Rock. We've been waiting to do this one for a while. I'm so psyched. It's finally happening. Joining me today is Slate's editor, Julia Turner. Hello, Julia. Hi. And of course, Slate's film critic, Dana Stevens. Hey, Dana. Hey, Steve. All right, before we go any further, I just, I have, I've been waiting to share this with you. It's my stupid story of my night seeing Hamlet at the public. I walked from 39th Street and 9th Avenue down to the public theater about a two-mile walk,

realized I was going to be a little bit late if I didn't hurry.

It was drippingly humid out.

I had to all but run, all but sprint the last three or four blocks.

I go into the theater and I just want, it's like Nixonian flap sweat.

And so simultaneously I'm thinking, well, the stranger is going to be sitting next to me.

You know, maybe if I just press my arms to my side really tightly, like, and contain the, you know, the stink.

And, you know, I don't know. I mean, I just, I couldn't believe how much I had sweated. And I walk in and I go to my seat. And in order to sit in my seat, I'm not the kind of person, believe me, who befriends the stranger sitting next to me ever. You don't say. Never done done into my life and never will.

But I did have to say to this person, you know, a version of excuse me in order to get to my seat.

So instead of saying, excuse me, I say, hi.

And he looks up and it's Sam Waterston.

The fucking DA himself.

And I sit down. And I sit down... Chung-chong.

And I sit down and it's one of those...

I don't know if this is like rooted in like, you know, physiological fact.

...