Culture Gabfest - You Are the Media Now
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Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 13 November 2024
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode, the hosts tackle A Real Pain, writer-director Jesse Eisenberg’s tale of two cousins (played by himself and Kieran Culkin) who travel to Poland to honor their late grandmother and, in the process, come to understand their family’s history through a new lens. Then, the three drop into the lush, sumptuous world of Like Water for Chocolate, Max’s new six-part limited series adapted from Laura Esquivel’s best-selling novel (which later became a critically acclaimed and internationally successful blockbuster.) Then finally, in a post 2024-election reality, do newsrooms still matter? What role will journalists play over the next few years? And can we solve the attention crisis in America? Our panel discusses.
In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, the panel dive into a simple, yet important question: How are you doing?
Email us at culturefest@slate.com.
Endorsements:
Dana: On the Media’s latest episode, “The Manosphere Celebrates a Win. Plus, M. Gessen on How to Survive an Autocracy.”
Julia: What better time than now to announce the results of the AMC Nicole Kidman poll!
Steve: “Jessica Mitford’s Escape From Facism” by Noah McCormack.
Podcast production by Jared Downing. Production assistance by Kat Hong.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Dana Stevens, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest. You are the Media Now edition. |
| 0:16.3 | It's Wednesday, November 13th, 2024. And on this week's show, we'll be discussing a real pain, a new film written and directed by and starring, co-starring Jesse Eisenberg, about two cousins on a trip to Poland to visit their grandmother's birthplace. Like Water for Chocolate, HBO's new six-part adaptation of the 1989 novel by Laura Esquivel. And finally, we'll talk about the state of the news media as we transition into what I will name with deep nausea, the second Trump administration. |
| 0:45.7 | I'm joined today, and this week we are recording remotely by critics Steve Metcalf. |
| 0:50.4 | Hey, Steve. |
| 0:51.3 | Hey, Dana. |
| 0:52.4 | And joining us from Los Angeles, where she's a fellow at the Annenberg School of Journalism is our dear colleague, Julia Turner. Hey, Steve. Hey, Dana. And joining us from Los Angeles, where she's a fellow at the Annenberg |
| 0:55.3 | School of Journalism is our dear colleague, Julia Turner. Hey, Julia. Hello, how are you guys? |
| 1:00.7 | I mean, I'll let you know in four years. Steve appears to be recording from like a small cork box, |
| 1:06.9 | so I think he's planning to hibernate. But Dana's hair looks great, so. |
| 1:13.0 | I've got that going, yeah. |
| 1:14.4 | Well, I mean, I should say that I'm glad we're talking this week for our plus about sort of how we're doing and our own, you know, personal choices of how to respond to the new unknown world that we're plunging into because if we started talking about it now, we would |
| 1:27.7 | never get into our culture show. Yeah, and it should be made clear, like, all our laughter |
| 1:32.5 | is gallows laughter, and I hope it has the sound of sympathy and not blibness. Don't worry, |
| 1:39.1 | we are in mourning along with you. Indeed. So let's move on to our first topic, the new movie A Real Pain. |
| 1:46.7 | The actor Jesse Eisenberg is much more than an actor, has been for a while. He's written and starred |
| 1:51.2 | in three plays for the Broadway stage. He's authored a book of short stories and many humor essays for |
| 1:56.7 | The New Yorker and other places. And in 2022, he wrote and directed his first film when you |
| 2:01.4 | finished saving the world, which was reservedly praised by critics. Amy Nicholson, always a |
| 2:06.8 | quotable critic, wrote for variety that it was a satire that exists in shades of beige. |
| 2:12.9 | I haven't seen that movie, but that's an unforgettable description. Now Eisenberg has come out with a second indie project that he wrote and directed, and this time he also co-stars in it, alongside Kieran Culkin, deservedly beloved for playing Roman Roy on HBO's succession. |
| 2:28.0 | In the film, Eisenberg and Culkin play a pair of cousins who traveled together to Poland after their grandmother's death to visit |
| 2:34.6 | the sites there where she lived before emigrating to the U.S., including a concentration camp. |
... |
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