Slate Culture Feed

Christine Brown Woolley grew up in Utah with a dad and two moms, in a polygamist community called the Apostolic United Brethren. When she became an adult, she joined a polygamist marriage as a third wife, helped raise more than a dozen kids, and became co-star of the TLC reality show Sister Wives .  Fast forward to 2025, and she has left her marriage and her polygamist faith. This week, she talks...

Hosts Alex Kirshner , Lindsay Gibbs , and Ben Lindbergh are joined by Nate Silver , founder of FiveThirtyEight and Silver Bulletin, to discuss his new NFL prediction model “ELWAY” and what it reveals about an unpredictable football league. Later in the show, OG Hang Up host Stefan Fatsis returns to talk about his new book on the dictionary, “Unabridged: The Thrill of and Threat to the Modern Dicti...

On today’s episode, hosts Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay celebrate Candice’s three years at ICYMI, and send her off onto her next chapter. They talk Dan and Phil’s hard launch, Connor Franta and Troye Sivan’s Instagram beef, and the major predictions Candice has for the internet in 2026. Get more of ICYMI with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of ICYMI and ad-free listening on all your f...

Walk into any store or flip on a radio, and you’ll probably hear the Police’s “Every Breath You Take” sooner or later. Thanks to that ubiquity, the swooning, menacing megahit’s songwriter—Sting—is a very wealthy man. Now his former bandmates, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers, are suing Sting over who deserves to profit from “Breath” and other Police songs. No matter how that dispute turns out, it...

Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay get into tech’s latest effort to turn A.I. into a status symbol. Anthropic has been pushing “ Thinking ” caps into the trendy streets of New York. OpenAI has been handing out awards for power users akin to YouTube subscriber plaques. But one of the worst offenders is Friend , a $129 wearable necklace that spent a million dollars to infiltrate subway stations and bus st...

On this week’s episode, Julia and Steve are joined by guest host Rebecca Onion to admire and puzzle over the magnetic appeal of Channing Tatum in Roofman . Does the beloved hunk’s captivating performance ground Derek Cianfrance’s tonally odd film?  Next, the hosts take another step into Tim Robinson’s cringey, paranoid, comedy looking glass with his new series The Chair Company . Finally, they wel...

Hosts Alex Kirshner , Lindsay Gibbs , and Ben Lindbergh are joined by the Times’s Martyn Ziegler to explain the ripple effects of the Gaza ceasefire on UEFA and Israeli soccer. Then, The New York Times sports reporter Ken Belson joins to unravel the continued drama surrounding Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show and the backdoor dealings of NFL owners. Finally, the hosts ask if the Seattle Marine...

In the new movie Sovereign , actor Nick Offerman plays an extremist who doesn’t believe in the legitimacy of the Federal government. In real life, Nick comes from a small-town political family. His father is the mayor of Minooka, Illinois, and his uncle is on the village board. In this episode Nick talks about choosing roles, how he’s different from his family, his love of teaching woodworking and...

On today’s episode, hosts Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay are joined by culture writer Aja Romano to try to make sense of Theo Von. Von was one of the podcasters credited with helping Donald Trump win the election, but in recent months, he’s deviated from the administration when it comes to his views on ICE raids and the war in Gaza. Who is Theo Von, really? What does it mean that influencers like hi...

On this week’s show, our fighters Steve, Julia, and Dana enter the ring to tussle over The Smashing Machine , the Dwayne Johnson vehicle directed by Benny Safdie. Can they smell what the Rock is cooking? Is it a subtly modulated performance about a sensitive pro UFC fighter? Or, a shameless Oscar play?  Next, it’s on to the offbeat climes of Tulsa, Oklahoma by way of The Lowdown, a shaggy noir ser...

Kate Lindsay and Candice Lim wade through the negative reactions to Taylor Swift’s album The Life of a Showgirl. From outdated meme references to clunky shots at other female artists, Swift’s album indicates an oddly distant relationship with the internet. However, is she a devious online mastermind or a blundering millennial? Plus, why it’s important that this album’s backlash has gone largely un...

Earlier this year, a tweet went out from the official account of the Democratic Party, tagging the Trump advisor Stephen Miller. It was an image of what appeared to be a simple hotel room chair. But for those in the know, it was much more than that: It was a “cuck chair,” an online meme straight out of a popular genre of hardcore pornography in which a man watches his partner have sex with another...

When Peter van Agtmael went to Iraq in 2006 to embed with the U.S. military, he was 24 years old and confident that his pictures could help end an unjust war. Two decades later, after documenting combat deaths overseas and then turning his camera lens on America, he's learned the limits of what photography can do. In this episode, Peter talks about the emotional toll of bearing witness to violence...

Hosts Alex Kirshner , Lindsay Gibbs , and Ben Lindbergh speak to Slate’s Nitish Pahwa about prediction markets and the legally gray future of gambling. Then they turn to college football and Bill Belichick’s messy start at UNC. The panel wraps with a discussion of Napheesa Collier’s recent criticism of WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert and the backlash it caused. On the bonus episode available exc...

On today’s episode, hosts Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay are joined by Slate senior editor Tony Ho Tran to talk about why it matters that EA Games has been sold to Saudi Arabia and Jared Kushner. In addition to likely cost-cutting, this new ownership puts games like The Sims even more at risk of censorship, especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ characters . If your Sim groom can’t end up making out wit...

Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay pour one out for MTV’s Catfish, which was recently cancelled by MTV after 9 seasons and 12 years. Back in 2010, Nev Schulman was the subject of the Catfish documentary, which revealed the heartbreaking truth about a woman he fell in love with online. The documentary helped coin the internet phenomenon of people creating fake personas to manipulate, extort, or trick oth...

On this week’s dispatch, Dana is joined by comrades in arms Sam Adams and Isaac Butler to take on Paul Thomas Anderson’s thrilling and incendiary new film One Battle After Another. Starring Leonard DiCaprio, the action epic depicts an America one notch away from our own fractured republic. Does the target of its revolutionary fantasia hit too close? They discuss. Next, they kvell about Long Story...

This week, Anna learns about how frustrating it is to apply for jobs these days, especially for early-career folks, even those with college degrees. First, Jeopardy champion Brendan Liaw talks about what it was like to list his job as “stay-at-home son” on national television. Then Slate writer Nitish Pahwa explains why talented people like Brendan are having such a hard time securing work. And fi...

Hosts Alex Kirshner , Ben Lindbergh , and Lindsay Gibbs speak to Fried Egg Golf’s Kevin Van Valkenburg about the American crowds, President, and golf lapses at the Ryder Cup. Ben previews the MLB playoffs, and the hosts discuss the purchase of Electronic Arts by Jared Kushner and a Saudi investment fund. For Afterballs, Ben dusts off a copy of Robert Redford’s oft-forgotten and underrated ski film...

On today’s episode, hosts Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay are joined by Spitfire News writer Kat Tenbarge to discuss how reactions to Charlie Kirk’s death are prompting us to reexamine free speech. In her piece, “ Is anyone going to defend free speech online? ” she explains how this right has long been under threat. From legal challenges to biased algorithms, the internet is being censored right befo...

In the rarefied world of smash pop singles, there are No. 1s—and there are No. 1 debuts . Entering Billboard ’s Hot 100 at the top is one of the hardest tricks in music. In fact, it wasn’t possible in the U.S. until 1995. That’s when the record labels hacked the Hot 100 and figured out how to send new singles straight into the chart penthouse.  But scoring a No. 1 in Week One doesn’t mean it’s bui...

On this week’s episode, Julia and Dana are joined by Slate writer (and Philadelphia native) Nadira Goffe for a conversation rooted in Delaware County about Task , HBO’s new gritty crime drama from the creators of Mare of Easttown .  Next, the hosts give longtime listeners what they’ve been chirping for: a discussion of birding. Specifically, it’s a discussion about the dirtbag, gonzo, totally self...

When an actor opens their mouth to sing in a movie, chances are high that the voice you hear will be their own. Even in music biopics, movie stars without much singing experience regularly go to great lengths to impersonate the most beloved vocalists of our time. Why not simply play Johnny Cash or Bruce Springsteen’s actual recordings, the reasons why we care about them in the first place? When th...

Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay break down the drama between Vlogbrothers star Hank Green and the online knitting community. Earlier this month, Green posted an educational SciShow episode about the knitting community’s contribution to physics. What the SciShow team didn’t expect were almost 30-minute long reaction videos and accusations of belittling and misogyny . This saga has spurred apology TikT...

Over the past few months, we've been asking you to tell us stories about your beauty interventions. You told us about feeling caught between viewing appearance improvements as vanity and recognizing how much looking a certain way affects your relationships, career, and self-worth. In this episode, Anna talks to listeners about their appearance choices: Asher, who spent $43,000 on plastic surgery a...