Culture Gabfest

Christina Cauterucci, Veralyn Williams and Lena Wilson spoil the second season of The Handmaid's Tale. Podcast production by Daniel Schroeder and Shasha Léonard. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the second part of our two-part episode about the B-52’s and R.E.M.—the bands that put Athens, Georgia on the map, and helped define new-wave rock in the early ’80s—we trace how they transformed themselves from hipsters to hitmakers. One band waited years to graduate from an indie label to the majors. The other almost quit after an AIDS-related tragedy, before their pop breakthrough. By the end of the ’80s, their hits—from “Orange Crush” to “Stand,” “Channel Z” to “Love Shack”—brought them squarely into the mainstream, just as “alternative rock” was coming to define a new sound for the ’90s.  Email: hitparade@slate.com  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Julia Turner, Dana Stevens, and Stephen Metcalf discuss the summer blockbuster Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the appeal of the Netflix cooking-failure show Nailed It, and Scarlett Johansson's casting as a trans man, with Slate's Evan Urquhart.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dana Stevens, Stephen Metcalf, and Julia Turner discuss the new documentary about Mr. Rogers: Won't You Be My Neighbor?, the Netflix comedy special Nanette, and the World Cup, with Mike Pesca.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The B-52’s and R.E.M. don’t sound all that much like each other. One group were avatars of kitsch, fusing punk, girl-group and garage rock—even Yoko Ono—into a retro-nuevo style all their own. The other group were mysterious, elliptical, often indecipherable, but they reinvented jangly guitar and classic-rock influences to make a new kind of New Wave. Together, this pair of distinctive bands helped make Athens, Georgia the epicenter of alternative cool in the ’80s and ’90s. In part one of this two-part episode of Hit Parade, we present the story of how the B-52’s and R.E.M. created a scene out of a college town—and became the most prominent queer-friendly, gender-fluid bands of their era.  Email: hitparade@slate.com  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Willa Paskin, Sam Adams, Jonathan Fischer and Rachelle Hampton spoil the second season of Westworld. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dana Stevens, Stephen Metcalf, and Julia Turner Discuss Brad Bird's The Incredibles 2, the 30 For 30 podcast series about Bikram yoga, and the re-emergence of astrology with production assistant Daniel Schroeder.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Decoder Ring is a podcast about cracking cultural mysteries. Every month host Willa Paskin,Slate’s TV critic, takes on a cultural question, object, idea, or habit and speak with experts,historians and obsessives to try and figure out where it comes from, what it means and why it Matters. Today: The clown has existed in various forms for thousands of years, what changed and made us suspect and fear them? The modern birthday clown is a very recent invention, by going back into the history of clowns and clowning we see that clowns are far more complex and capable of far more expression than the kids entertainment of Bozo and Ronald McDonald. How those complex figures transformed into obligatorily sunny commercial mascots may also explain why they are increasingly seen as sinister today.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stephen Metcalf, Isaac Butler, and Laura Miller discuss the horror film Hereditary, the return of The Staircase with Rebecca Lavoie, and Isaac's Shakespeare podcast Lend Me Your Ears.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lend Me Your Ears is a six-part podcast miniseries exploring how Shakespeare’s works have shaped our modern views on politics. Each month, host Isaac Butler will dig into a different Shakespeare play to explore how Shakespeare was responding to his current events, and how they map onto our own. In this first episode, Lend Me Your Ears is looking at one of Shakespeare’s most accessible works: Julius Caesar. Why was the Bard so fascinated with the fall of the Roman Republic? Why do we tend to turn to this play when we worry about society’s future? How have contemporary theater makers reinvented Shakespeare’s version of the story for their audiences, especially in troubled political times? Subscribe to Lend Me Your Ears on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Slate Plus members get a bonus episode of Lend Me Your Ears every month. Learn more at slate.com/shakespeare Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dana Stevens, Rachel Syme, and Lena Wilson spoil Hereditary.  Podcast production by Daniel Schroeder Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Julia Turner, Dana Stevens, and Stephen Metcalf discuss the movie Ocean's 8, the theory and practice of Instagram Stories, and the legacy of Anthony Bourdain with the New Yorker's Helen Rosner.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Marissa Martinelli, Aisha Harris, Inko Kang, and Carmen Russo spoil Ocean's 8.  Podcast production by Daniel Schroeder Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dana Stevens, Julia Turner, and Stephen Metcalf are live at S&S Farm Brewery in Nassau, NY for a secret summer getaway show. They discuss the c-word, the film Book Club, and perform an impromptu book club with the audience on Phillip Roth's The Ghost Writer. Plus, music by Red Headed Stranger and Franz Nicolay. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who gets to decide if Sherlock Holmes is gay? For over a century, fans of Sherlock Holmes have been analyzing, debating, and creating new texts with Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters. Decoder Ring explores the Johnlock Conspiracy, a fan theory about the BBC TV show Sherlock, positing the inevitability of a gay romance between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. With interviews from historians, journalists, and fans at the heart of this controversial idea, this episode explores this theory, how it played out in the real world, and whether this kind of fandom is a meaningful way of interacting with fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Marissa Martinelli, June Thomas, Veralyn Williams and Lena Wilson spoil 13 Reasons Why.  Podcast production by Daniel Schroeder Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dana Stevens, Julia Turner, and Stephen Metcalf discuss the film First Reformed, the podcast My Favorite Murder with production assistant Daniel Schroeder, and the redemption of Tucker Max with Slate's Laura Bennett.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Even before the launch of MTV, the music video has been making pop songs buzzworthy. And since the early ’80s, it has transformed also-rans into hitmakers—from the Buggles and Duran Duran to Peter Gabriel and a‑ha. But until the early 2010s, watching a video didn’t count on the Billboard charts. That all changed thanks to YouTube—and the biggest immediate beneficiary from the addition of video to the charts was a rising pop star, incubated on the Disney Channel, but looking to change her image. Miley Cyrus was born into hitmaking, line-dancing, multimedia royalty, and she used video titillation—and even the social site Chatroulette—to top the charts. But what did all that provocation mean for…y’know, the music? And how is video still making hits—including the song that’s No. 1 this very week in 2018?  Chris Molanphy explains it all.  hitparade@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forrest Wickman, Marissa Martinelli, and Sam Adams spoil Solo: A Star Wars Story. Podcast production by Daniel Schroeder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner discuss the royal wedding with Simon Doonan, the death of author Tom Wolfe with Laura Miller, and the way TV shows survive cancelation by examining Brooklyn Nine Nine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices