Slate Culture Feed

Cover songs once had a simple playbook: Artists would faithfully rerecord a song—note for note and word for word. They might modernize the instrumentation. If they were feeling radical, they’d punch up the vocals a bit. Now it’s hard to say what a cover is anymore. If Ariana Grande turns “My Favorite Things” into “7 Rings,” does that qualify? When Drake says he’s “Way 2 Sexy,” is he covering Right...

Like a manager or an agent or a publicist, a stylist has become a kind of must-have accessory for well-dressed, A-list celebrities. It’s just expected that they will have hired someone to select the clothes they’ll wear at public appearances. But this was not always the case.  In today’s episode, Avery Trufelman, host of Articles of Interest , will guide us through the collapse of a certain kind o...

On this week’s show, the panel is first joined by Mark Harris, cultural historian and the author of Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood , to discuss the 96th Academy Awards: a fun, glitzy return to form filled with surprisingly political moments. Then, the three review FX’s Shōgun , a massive epic set in 17th century Japan that many are calling “the new Game of...

This month marks not only the third birthday of In Case You Missed It but the birthdays of 75% of the ICYMI production team so what else could we do but host a birthday spectacular? On today’s episode, Rachelle and Candice receive birthday messages from friends of the show like Normal Gossip’s Alex Sujong Laughlin and Kelsey McKinney, Time’s Moises Mendez II, NPR’s Wailin Wong and more. Later in t...

This week, we’re revisiting an episode about the transitional lives of Uber drivers. Anna and then-producer Katie Bishop hitched multiple rides in the Bay Area and heard stories about immigration, domestic violence, personal finance, and more.  Death, Sex & Money is now produced by Slate! To support us and our colleagues, please sign up for our membership program, Slate Plus . Members get ad-f...

Joel Anderson, Stefan Fatsis, and Josh Levin are joined by  Great Expectations  author Vinson Cunningham to talk about the fracas between the LSU and South Carolina women’s basketball teams. They also discuss Steve Garvey, DEI in Florida, and other intersections between sports and politics in 2024. Women’s hoops (3:24): In so many ways, this weekend showed that this sport has the juice. Sports and...

Rachelle Hampton and Candice Lim are joined by writer and journalist Fortesa Latifi who has been reporting extensively on  child influencer legislation  for Teen Vogue. In August 2023, the governor of Illinois passed an amendment to the state’s child labor law that would require parents to compensate their children for their appearances in monetized content. Drawing comparisons to the Coogan Law,...

On today’s show, Rachelle and Candice return to the halcyon days of YouTube in 2013, when wholesome youths with names like Zoe Sugg and Caspar Lee and Troye Sivan ruled supreme.  Colloquially known as the Brit Crew , these teens and twenty-somethings were some of the first to prove that internet fame could translate into million-dollar empires. And while their influence has diminished over the pas...

On this week’s show, the panel returns to Arrakis! First up, the trio reviews Dune: Part Two , the (as the title suggests) second part of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 science fiction epic. In it, Timothée Chalamet plays Paul Atreides, the supposed “messiah” of Arrakis, a hostile desert planet rich in spice, in a fantastic feat of world building and worm-riding. Then, they...

To mark the return of Death, Sex & Money, we’re presenting a live celebration of new beginnings, featuring interviews with comedian and TV host W. Kamau Bell, writer Vicki Larson, Dr. Bonnie Chen, and artist Carissa Potter. You’ll also hear lively music accompaniment by D’Wayne Wiggins of Tony! Toni! Toné! This episode was recorded live at KQED in San Francisco on February 29, 2024.  Death, Se...

Joel Anderson, Stefan Fatsis, and Josh Levin are joined by NFL reporting legend Peter King to talk about the Chicago Bears’ quarterback dilemma, what he’s seen in his four decades covering pro football, and why Bill Belichick refuses to speak to him.   Justin Fields and Caleb Williams (4:02):  What are the Bears going to do?   Peter King looks back (29:48):  What stories did he screw up? Which one...

Candice Lim is joined by  Link in Bio  writer Rachel Karten, whose Substack breaks down how Stanley Cups went viral, why the Duolingo owl got a BBL and how “seemingly ranch” hit supermarket shelves. Karten was a social media manager who started her newsletter after leaving Bon Appétit following a  racial and labor reckoning  in 2020 that exposed — what the publication themselves called — a “ toxic...

On this week’s show, the panel is first joined by Wesley Morris, New York Times’ critic at large, to dissect This Is Me… Now: A Love Story , Jennifer Lopez’s bizarre, nutty, yet utterly delicious self-funded vanity project that cost the singer $20 million to produce. (Wesley wrote a brilliant piece about it for the Times .) Then, the three explore 20 Days in Mariupol , the Oscar-nominated document...

On today’s episode, Rachelle is joined by her best friend Danielle Hewitt, a producer at Prologue Projects and, formerly, Slate’s daily news podcast What Next. In a deeply revealing exercise, the two go through a selection of the 250 TikToks that Danielle sent Rachelle while the latter was on a six week long social media break. But first, Candice breaks down the highlights of Jennifer Lopez’s new...

Thirty years ago, a new kind of soda arrived in select stores. Instead of crowing about how spectacular it was, it offered up a liquid shrug, a fizzy irony. OK Soda was an inside joke for people who knew soda wasn’t cool. But what exactly was the punchline? In today’s episode, we’re going to ask how Coca-Cola, a company predicated on the idea that soda is more than "OK," ever bankrolled such a pro...

Joel Anderson, Stefan Fatsis, and Josh Levin discuss whether court-storming should be banned for good. The Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins also joins to explain why she believes the NCAA is cheapening Caitlin Clark’s scoring records. Finally, they assess the NCAA’s latest legal trouble and what comes next.   Court-storming (4:41):  Is it even possible to stop students from rushing the court?   Cla...

Rachelle and Candice dive deep into the scammer story currently scratching the internet’s itch: Reesa Teesa’s 52-part “ Who TF Did I Marry ?” TikTok series. On February 14, @ ReesaMTeesa  detailed the very harrowing story of meeting, dating and divorcing a man she calls “Legion.” She recaps her highly suspicious relationship to a man who courted her in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and a...

Barbra Streisand: star of stage and screen. Oscar-winner, film director and TV producer. Culture warrior and meme generator . Yes, all that—but don’t get it twisted: Barbra’s legend rests in her catalog of hit songs—and that voice. Even as culture vultures consume her recent doorstop of a memoir My Name Is Barbra , what’s getting overlooked are Streisand’s awesome musical benchmarks, especially on...

On today’s episode, Rachelle is joined by Nadira Goffe to dive into the firestorm engulfing two recent interviews on Shannon Sharpe’s delightfully dishy podcast Club Shay Shay.  Katt Williams  and  Mo’Nique  sat down with Sharpe in separate three-hour-long interviews that have set the internet ablaze. Both of the legendary comedians dished about their long-standing beefs with figures such as Ludac...

On this week’s show, the panel begins by dissecting Mr. & Mrs. Smith , the episodic remake of Brangelina’s 2005 espionage film. The Prime Video series stars Donald Glover and Maya Erskine as the titular Smiths, spies who become “married” as a part of the job, and explores partnership in the gig economy in a quieter, smaller, and less glamorous version of the original. Then, they review The Col...

Joel Anderson, Stefan Fatsis, and Josh Levin discuss whether the NBA All-Star Game is fixable. They also talk about whether Fanatics and Nike are destroying the sports uniform. Finally, writer Abraham Josephine Riesman joins to explain the allegations against wrestling impresario Vince McMahon and why they matter.   All-Star Game (3:16):  What can the league do to revive what used to be a showcase...

Rachelle Hampton and Candice Lim catch up on the latest stories churning the Taylor Swift media machine, from her lawyers sending a cease and desist letter to a  college student , to her possibly leading a groundbreaking case against  AI deepfakes . Then, they break down the backlash surrounding Emily Mariko, who was criticized by her followers for selling out — and shelling out —  a tote bag . Th...

The eerie similarity of coffee shops all over the world was so confounding to Kyle Chayka that it led him to write the new book Filterworld: How Algorithms Are Flattening Culture . In today’s episode, Kyle’s going to walk us through the recent history of the cafe, to help us see how digital behavior is altering a physical space hundreds of years older than the internet itself, and how those change...

Candice Lim is joined by dating culture researcher Lakshmi Rengarajan and culture writer Kate Lindsay to discuss the past, present and future of dating apps. Online dating has been around since the days of dial-up. But apps like Tinder disrupted the market and changed the way we’ve dated for the past decade. Recently, there’s been several trends emerging, from Gen-Z  abandoning the apps  to baby b...

On this week’s show, the panel returns to 1985 and reviews The Greatest Night in Pop , Netflix’s star-studded documentary about how “We Are the World” (a charity single performed by USA for Africa, a supergroup comprised of the most popular artists not only of the time, but arguably, ever) came to be and the legendary night it was recorded. Although it features cameos from Michael Jackson, Lionel...