Slate Culture Feed

Conversations about screen addition are almost always about kids. Entire governments have mobilized in pursuit of offsetting the negative effects of being too plugged in, but there’s one demographic we never talk about. On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by writer Jessica Lucas, who wrote a piece for New York Magazine about “ The 75-year-old Screenagers ,” and the ways adult children...

Four decades ago, Paul Simon broke out of a middle-age slump with a collaborative project few saw coming. Join Chris Molanphy as he explores the musical brilliance, polarizing legacy—and of course, the chart history—of 1986’s Graceland. Captivated by a borrowed mixtape of South African music, Simon defied a UN cultural boycott and traveled to apartheid-era South Africa to collaborate and record wi...

Since Bram Stoker’s Dracula was first published in 1897 it has inspired hundreds, if not thousands, of other fictional vampires. But none are quite as strange as that found in the frigid climes of Iceland. There, just a few years after Dracula was first printed, emerged a so-called translation that diverged so radically from Stoker’s that it introduced new characters, new scenes, and new themes—an...

You may have thought we knew everything there was to know about Elizabeth Holmes. The Theranos founder who was found guilty of defrauding investors sparked books, documentaries, and even a TV show—but nothing like this. Nathan Fielder’s Y ou Can See Everything is ostensibly another exploration of Holmes, but ends up being about so much more. On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay and joined by Slat...

For this episode, we asked for your stories about medication side effects. You told us about the weird, from sleep-eating to compulsive spending. You told us about making trade-off calculations: Is an improved mood worth a decreased sex drive? And we heard about the loneliness of living with side effects that alter your quality of life when you have a condition that depends on lifelong treatment....

The “tradwives” are retreating. Nara Smith went on Call Her Daddy to renounce any association with the term, and has been in the middle of a full-on rebrand as the promotes her new cookbook. Other figureheads, like Hannah Neeleman aka Ballerina Farm, are taking a step back to put their business first. Meanwhile, the actual former tradwives are suffering. On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is jo...

Clowns have existed in various forms for thousands of years. From the big top to Bozo’s TV show, they used to be beloved figures of amusement and delight. What changed and made so many people suspect and fear them? In this episode, originally aired in 2018, Decoder Ring traces the history of clowns and clowning and finds that both the scary clown and the happy clown are over-simplifications that h...

The latest internet “trend,” apparently , is adult children cutting off their parents. And while there are plenty of spaces on the internet where both children and parents can seek advice and community about their estrangement, the reality is much more complicated, and these digital support groups may be doing more harm than good. On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by author Christina...

Now famous as a New York City nightlife fixture and for his role on Somebody Somewhere , comedian Murray Hill used to keep his personal history private. In fact, the persona of “Murray Hill” started as a drag king character modeled after old-timey comedians. Over time, though, the gap between the character and the man has shrunk. This week on the show, Murray opens up about everything: his upbring...

The new AI agents from Meta and OpenAI have one thing in common: they look like children’s cartoons . At the same time these companies are warning that AI will kill us all, they’re trying to convince users to try even more products by making them look as cuddly and innocent as possible. On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by writer and Slate columnist Steffi Cao to talk about just how...

Few inspirational phrases are quoted more often than Mahatma Gandhi’s “Be the change you want to see in the world.” It shows up on t-shirts, bumper stickers, even tattooed on people’s bodies. Life coaches, leadership trainers, and American presidents constantly cite it. There is one problem with this quotation, however: Gandhi never said it. And the story of how the “be the change” actually came t...

Ten years ago, the world was gearing up to welcome the first female president. Instead, Donald Trump’s surprise victory went on to alter America’s entire political landscape. It’s exactly what the people behind the Pussyhat Project feared. And yet, the pink knitted hat that took over the first of many Women’s Marches has gone on to become the opposite of the feminist symbol it was intended to be....

To mark John Prine’s 80’s birthday, Anna catches up with his wife Fiona. Then we revisit Anna’s 2018 conversation with John, where he discussed his bestselling album Tree of Forgiveness . Podcast production by Cameron Drews. Right now, we’re running a deal on Death, Sex & Money Plus memberships! Sign up to get bonus episodes of DSM and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Vis...

As soon as Jane Doe filed her civil suit against Cornell University, the internet was up in arms. Everyone from Florence Pugh to Love Island contestants took to social media to share their disgust, imploring men to do better when it comes to preventing sexual assault. For those who lived through #MeToo, it all feels eerily familiar. On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by writer and cre...

The 1980s yielded a bumper crop of near-miss hits—songs that stalled out at No. 2, No. 11, or No. 41 during their original Billboard runs but were vindicated in the streaming era. The song that lent its title to a Molly Ringwald movie missed the Top 40—twice. Stevie Nicks missed the Top 10 with what is now her most beloved solo song. And Bruce Springsteen missed his only chance at a No. 1 song tha...

One of the many perks of subscribing to Decoder Ring Plus is access to every episode of Decoder Rings Back, our member-exclusive series where host Willa Paskin calls up a listener to answer their question about a cultural mystery directly. This week we’re offering a taste of the latest Decoder Rings Back, where Willa tries to clear up our listener Samantha’s culinary confusion: Why, of all spices...

What if I told you there was a machine that, using powerful energy and frequencies, could cure everything from common colds to cancers to missing limbs? Well, I’d be lying. And yet, a not-insignificant part of the internet is waiting with baited breath for the arrival of “medbeds,” a QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theory that President Trump has even acknowledged himself. On today’s episode, host Kate...

After three years as Poet Laureate, Ada Limón craved a smaller, more private life. Then she saw a sign: her childhood home was for sale. In this episode, Anna and Ada talk about writing, memory, chronic pain and making a life where she started. Ada Limón’s latest book is called Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry . She’s also the editor of You Are Here: Poetry In the Natural World . Death, Se...

There are some controversies that can only happen on Threads. Discussions about mermaid trauma, for instance, or Pepsi having to apologize for their post about Wild Cherry. The platform is home to particularly unhinged users, but why? On today’s show, host Kate Lindsay is joined by creator, podcaster, and reluctant Threads lover Franchesca Ramsey to discuss why Threads got its reputation, and how...

Comment sections are dying. At least, when it comes to digital media. Platforms like Twitter have become the new place for discourse, and apps like TikTok are changing what the comment section is even for. Slate’s comments, however, are special. On today’s show, host Kate Lindsay is joined by staff writer Luke Winkie, who dove into the lore of Slate’s decades-old commenter community, and even call...

This year, Stavros Halkias released a stand-up special, appeared in the Anthony Bourdain biopic Tony , and continued his run on the hit Netflix show Tires . Despite the high points, he says this year has also been “torture.” This week on the show, Stavros breaks down why success and unhealthy habits go hand in hand for him. He also traces his upbringing in a working-class immigrant family in Balti...

Dumbphones are a popular recommendation for people looking to reduce their screen time, but it’s not as simple as it looks. When writer Stephanie Murray made the switch, while she found it did solve many of her problems, it created them for pretty much everyone else around her. On today’s show, host Kate Lindsay is joined by Murray, who wrote about her experience for The New York Times , to discus...

In the 1970s, Dolly Parton parlayed her Nashville success into megawatt pop-culture icon status—yet many of her familiar hits of the era barely scratched the Top 40. Parton finally crossed over at the turn of the ’80s by courting pop fans directly. Nearly five decades later, country music is ubiquitous on the pop charts, with Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” recently setting a record for most weeks...

In the early 1970s, a jigsaw puzzle of a cheerful, young, naked, fat woman known only as “Bridget in the Buff” arrived in stores all over America. It was just the first of countless Bridget-related merchandise that would be sold around the world for the next decade: calendars , playing cards, coloring books, cookbooks , and much more. Bridget was everywhere. But who was she? In this episode of Dec...

Like clockwork, another article has created a moral panic about so-called “sickfluencers,” or people—usually women—who share online about their illnesses and disabilities. Critics argue that the rise of these diagnoses and creators is some kind of social contagion, with participants faking their symptoms for social media attention. But these fears are not just overblown—they’re harmful. On today’s...