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Own your tomorrow. I'm

1:07

Stephen Meckath and this is the

1:09

Slate Culture Gab Fest, Emma Stone's

1:11

horny Frankenstein movie edition. It's Wednesday,

1:13

December 13th, 2023. On

1:17

today's show, Poor Things. It's the

1:19

latest from director Yorgos Lanthimos. It's

1:22

a reverse gender Frankenstein, sort

1:24

of. It's

1:26

overly simplistic, but we'll complicate it. Trust me.

1:29

It stars Emma Stone. And for that segment, we're

1:31

going to be joined by Slate's own Sam Adams

1:34

to discuss. And then television

1:36

pioneer and absolute American icon Norman

1:38

Lear died this past week at the age

1:40

of 101. He's the creator,

1:42

of course, of sitcoms like All

1:44

in the Family, Jefferson's Maud. But

1:47

that's only the tip of that iceberg. He

1:49

really remade TV so it could be topical

1:51

and morally serious. And finally,

1:54

Slate's own wonderful Laura Miller will join us

1:56

to discuss her 10 best books of the

1:58

year. Of course, joining

2:00

me first is Julia Turner from the

2:02

LA Times. Hey, Julia. Julia Turner

2:04

Hello, hello. David Allen And of course, Dana

2:07

Stevens, the film critic for slate.com. Hey,

2:09

Dana. Dana Stevens Hey, Steve. David Allen All right,

2:12

before we start, though, I should say Julia

2:14

will be sitting out our first segment. We'll

2:16

be joined instead by Slate's own Sam Adams.

2:18

Hi, guys. Thanks for having

2:20

me back. Let's

2:22

make a show, shall we? Julia Turner Let's go. David

2:24

Allen All right. Well, Georgos Lanthimos is

2:26

the Greek film director best known for

2:29

The Lobster and The Favourite. His new

2:31

one is Poor Things. It stars Emma

2:33

Stone as Bella, a monster somewhat

2:36

in the Frankenstein mode. We'll get to

2:38

it. She was a pregnant woman who

2:40

committed suicide and has been now brought

2:42

back to life by a brilliant scientist

2:45

played by Willem Dafoe. But

2:47

with her own fetus's brain

2:49

now installed in her body,

2:51

she must thereby relearn human

2:53

behavior, the very basics of

2:55

physical embodiment from scratch. The

2:58

movie is dark, semi-surreal satire.

3:00

It follows her as she discovers the

3:02

vagaries of the world. It

3:04

also stars Mark Ruffalo and Rami Youssef.

3:07

In the clip, you're going to hear

3:09

the voices of Stone as Bella Baxter

3:11

and Ruffalo as Bella's

3:13

lover Duncan Wedderburn.

3:16

They're vacationing together in Lisbon, but Bella starts

3:18

to think Duncan is holding her back. And

3:21

just a quick note, when she refers to

3:23

God, she's actually referring to the

3:25

Willem Dafoe character, the scientist who brought her

3:27

back to life, whose name is Godwin. She

3:30

calls him God. Let's listen. Understand me never

3:32

lived outside God's hand. What? So

3:35

Bella's so much to discover, and

3:38

your sad face makes

3:41

me discover angry feelings for you.

3:45

Right. Become

3:48

the very thing I hate, grasping succubus

3:50

of a lover. Quite

3:54

many of them offer it now, I'm if. Fuck.

3:59

So dare they. you grasping succubus

4:01

of a lover. But

4:05

for now I will refer to you

4:07

as late-to-themed film critic. Who quite the

4:10

visual and linguistic feast? What a wild

4:12

movie. What did you think? Yeah,

4:14

very juicy that we get to talk about

4:17

this movie because I have many contradictory feelings

4:19

about it and even though I quite enjoyed

4:21

it, which I'll get into, when I was

4:23

reading over some of the negative reviews of

4:25

the movie, I basically agreed with every critique

4:27

in the, I just feel

4:29

like most of the movie, at least you

4:31

know the first three quarters of it, were

4:33

able to win me over anyway. And I

4:35

was a bit surprised by that because I

4:37

have not been a big fan of Yorgos

4:40

Lanthimos in the past. I would say that

4:42

his movies in general seem to me somewhat

4:44

show-offy and that they're full of interesting

4:46

ideas but that they're sort of pointlessly

4:48

overstylized in their direction. He's in love

4:50

with the fish eye lens and several

4:52

of his movies including this one. He

4:54

just randomly puts frames in fish eye

4:56

for reasons that don't seem to make

4:58

any narrative sense to me. There's

5:01

a lot about him in the past that I

5:03

found a little bit preening as

5:05

a director but this movie

5:07

for one thing, it looks absolutely fantastic.

5:09

I really recommend people see it on

5:11

the big screen if they possibly can

5:13

because it's lusciously production-designed. The costumes are

5:15

incredible and the look is also, as

5:17

was the case with the favorite actually,

5:19

which was hyper stylized in a different

5:21

way, the look is a part of

5:23

the message. The kind of

5:25

modernness of the movie comes in the

5:27

way that it looks in some ways

5:29

but the big reason to see it

5:31

is Emma Stone's performance which is just

5:34

outstanding, technically unbelievable because

5:36

she's literally creating a character

5:38

from infancy into adulthood right

5:40

before our eyes inside the same body.

5:44

But also just very funny, very charming,

5:46

I think better than the writing that

5:48

she's speaking from in some ways

5:50

like the dialogue in some ways I think

5:52

punches its points home too clearly. There could

5:54

actually be much less dialogue in this movie

5:57

and it might be smarter but Emma Stone

5:59

is just so... brilliant, funny,

6:01

adorable, sexy in this role that

6:03

I think it's worth seeing just

6:05

for her. Sam, you're up.

6:08

Yeah, so this is a movie I did kind

6:11

of an about face on between the first

6:13

and the second time I saw it, which

6:15

is somewhat unusual for me. That preening quality

6:17

that Data mentioned was definitely at

6:20

the forefront the first time I watched it. I

6:22

sort of – it felt like kind of when

6:24

you meet a person at a party or something

6:27

and they're really determined to convince you how weird

6:29

and eccentric they are right off the bat. I

6:32

just felt like, okay, I get it. You're

6:34

weird and kooky and nutty and what a

6:37

– and then I watched the movie again knowing that

6:39

it was a comedy and having in some

6:41

ways sort of lowered my expectations. It

6:44

met those resoundingly. I think it's

6:47

very funny. You hear that in

6:49

the clip that your sad face

6:51

makes me discover angry feelings for you. There's

6:53

loads of lines like that that maybe

6:56

sort of laugh out loud. I think

6:58

the sort of thematic subtext

7:00

of it, which I'm sure we'll talk

7:03

about, is extremely thin and in some

7:05

ways doesn't bear that much scrutiny, but

7:07

it is incredibly enjoyable. It's, as

7:09

Dana mentioned, a treat to look

7:11

at. Emma Stone's performance at Mark Ruffalo's

7:14

as well is I think just

7:16

fantastic. I

7:18

think Mark Ruffalo's is kind of slovenly

7:20

actually, but it's very fun to watch.

7:24

His English accent is just an absolute

7:27

disaster. I kind

7:29

of love that about it, but I guess we

7:31

will see exactly how much discussion it bears. I'm

7:34

sort of avoided thinking about it too much because I

7:36

just want to enjoy it superficially. So

7:38

I think there's a lot of that level

7:41

of pleasure on it, which is, I

7:43

guess, appropriate for a movie that is

7:45

about self-gratification and maybe not too

7:47

much for the higher brain functions. It's

7:50

funny because all of the intelligence of the

7:53

movies, in a weird

7:55

way, is surface intelligence, right? It's

7:58

pyrotechnically digital. and

8:01

verbal and yet as soon as

8:03

you press on it and try

8:05

to get at its emotional or

8:07

thematic truths I agree it tends

8:09

to vaporize a little

8:11

bit. That said,

8:13

I think all of

8:15

the performances are tremendous. I think Emma Stone

8:18

is a tortoise, I think

8:20

she's terrific. It gives her

8:22

all kinds of comic possibilities.

8:25

Physically she clearly has a

8:27

background as a dancer. She's

8:30

a wonderful physical mover. There's an

8:32

actual dance number with Ruffalo. That's

8:35

a showstopper. It's just

8:37

absolutely fabulous. All the

8:40

acting chops are right

8:42

there and she

8:44

doesn't overplay it and it's very funny and

8:46

the faux naive like explain to me your

8:49

patriarchal ways is to a marvelous

8:51

effect. I think Ruffalo is good

8:54

because he is slovenly. It's a

8:56

very broad performance. I

8:58

did find I was laughing and

9:00

laughter was good to carry

9:03

me through. I think Defoe

9:05

as the God figure which

9:07

is just overplayed and we've

9:09

seen it from Frankenstein all the way

9:11

up to Blade Runner. Defoe is

9:14

actually quite good. He's got this jigsaw

9:16

puzzle face filled with scars

9:18

and it's just mask like and it

9:20

builds upon his own wonderfully

9:22

distinctive physiognomy and his voice acting

9:24

is just marvelous in this film

9:27

and there's a degree of eternal

9:30

and filial tenderness that I think

9:32

is very well played by both

9:34

actors. We

9:36

will get to this it sounds like in the

9:38

plus segment. The

9:41

three act structure of it roughly is

9:44

a fetching and

9:46

very intriguing setup with Rami Yousaf

9:48

being the wonderful good guy in

9:50

the film and

9:53

the middle third is the slovenly picaresque and

9:55

the final third I rate as a disaster

9:57

and it's at that moment where the themes

9:59

are they're sort of rising to the surface rather

10:02

belatedly and rather rapidly. I mean,

10:04

they've been there all along. They're

10:06

not hard to discern, but exceedingly

10:09

clumsily. And it's at that moment,

10:11

Dana 1 checks one's Wikipedia page

10:13

to discover, based

10:15

on a novel by a man, directed

10:17

by a man, screenplay

10:20

by a man, this

10:22

feminist parable, and I would

10:24

have been surprised if it were

10:26

otherwise. And that is a real

10:29

indictment of the film. Yeah,

10:31

we're going to save the spoilers for our plus

10:33

segment, but I completely agree that it falls apart

10:35

at the end. I say as much in my

10:37

review, and that ends up leaving you with a

10:39

kind of unsettled, unsatisfied feeling, even if you did

10:41

enjoy what came before. But

10:43

I will say that this made

10:46

me want to read the novel

10:48

it's based on, which I think

10:50

probably treats these ideas, ideas about

10:52

feminism and consent and sexuality and

10:54

liberation with probably more nuance than

10:56

Joros Lanthimos' adaptation does. The

10:59

ending though, and by ending, I mean kind of the

11:01

last act of the movie. I don't

11:03

know whether to say it's 20 minutes, 10 minutes.

11:05

I don't know how long it is, but you're

11:07

all going to know what I mean. It's when

11:09

Christopher Abbott's character enters the movie, it starts to

11:11

feel to me like, oh, this was adapted from

11:13

a novel and they're trying to bring in this,

11:15

you know, important character who in fact changes everything

11:18

about the entire story, but he's being brought in

11:20

too late and being given too little to do

11:22

for him actually to be anything more

11:24

than a kind of thematic punching bag. And

11:26

yeah, I mean, it's, this is why I think I

11:28

agree with you, Sam, that as much as I

11:30

might enjoy this movie, it's not important. I would never

11:33

put it on a top 10 list. I would never

11:35

consider it sort of a major film of the

11:37

year because both of this week

11:39

ending and just because the

11:42

style and the look and the acting surpass

11:44

the actual writing and ideas of the movie.

11:47

I mean, we should, we should talk a little more, I think about just the

11:49

look of this movie. Um,

11:51

it's already sort of winning awards for

11:54

production design and cinematography. And it is

11:56

just staggering to look at. They shot the portion

11:59

of the movie. that is on color, which is

12:01

about 2 thirds of it, as you

12:03

mentioned in your review, Dana, it kind of pops from

12:05

black and went into color as soon as Bella starts

12:07

having orgasms. And they shot it

12:09

on this sort of bespoke, specifically

12:12

made for this production Kodak reversal film stock,

12:15

which just gives us these incredibly vibrant contrasty

12:17

colors. It looks like somebody, basically you have

12:19

like an old TV set and you were

12:22

in there like messing with the color knobs

12:24

and you turned like the hue all the

12:26

way to the right or something like that

12:28

kind of level

12:30

of saturation. So it is really kind

12:33

of astonishing to look at, has this

12:35

kind of wonderfully unnatural quality

12:37

to it, which I really enjoy. It

12:40

is, I think, something that's gonna play really well for

12:42

the movie that kind of goes into awards season

12:45

because having I've seen it twice in a theater

12:47

and again on my television set and it looks

12:50

fantastic streaming onto a TV,

12:52

it's the kind of thing they would have used in

12:54

like Best Buy to sell the latest set. So

12:57

I think it has a real, a great

13:00

look to it. The production design is really kind of inventive

13:02

and wacky. If you watch it very closely, you can see

13:04

there's all sorts of genital

13:06

symbolism in the way that certain rectangular

13:10

doors and their semi-circular

13:12

windows above them are shaped. So

13:15

they're just having a tremendous amount of fun with

13:17

that. And I think that's really infectious once you,

13:19

if you get on its wavelength. Yeah,

13:22

the costumes as well, which are by a designer

13:24

named Holly Waddington. There are just these costumes that

13:26

I want there to be an entire

13:28

couture line inspired by Bela Baxter. The

13:30

combination of modern and Victorian and the shapes

13:33

and the colors. And it's just a place

13:35

where there's the fantasia and freedom being let

13:37

loose in the same way that it is

13:39

in Emma Stone's performance. Yeah,

13:41

and the Dana, there's something both abstracted,

13:46

super stylized and yet very busy and

13:48

very specific about the movie's sense

13:50

of place. It goes from city to

13:53

city to city. Alexandria,

13:56

Lisbon, London, Paris. This

14:00

is long set piece in the middle in Paris.

14:03

And it's both

14:05

clearly Victorian-ish, I

14:07

think, universe, pegged

14:11

to our common memory

14:13

of what such places look like. And

14:16

yet it has this almost like Italo

14:18

Calvino, it's taking

14:20

place nowhere or in some bizarre

14:22

confection of the real and the

14:24

unreal that's quite

14:27

captivating. I haven't seen, I'm somewhat ashamed

14:29

to admit, his other movies. Maybe

14:32

talk a little bit about his aesthetic

14:34

and ethic as a filmmaker. Well,

14:36

I'm surprised you haven't seen the favorite because I'm sure

14:38

we must have talked about it on the Culture Gab

14:41

Fest, given that it was an Oscar candidate and a

14:43

popular movie that year and Olivia Colman won an

14:45

Oscar for it. But maybe you were just

14:47

out the week that we talked about it.

14:49

But yeah, maybe Sam has seen more Yorgos

14:51

Lanthimos movies than I have. I have to

14:53

admit that I don't often see them unless

14:55

I know I'm going to write about them

14:57

because of that exact sort of smug quality

14:59

that we mentioned, which I think all of

15:01

his movies have had to some extent. All

15:04

of them have been ideas movies. His ideas

15:06

tend to be similar. And I get into

15:08

this in my review as well. He's really

15:10

interested in entrapment in these

15:12

kind of claustrophobic situations that

15:15

explore human degradation. He

15:17

has a mean sense of humor. And

15:19

if that's something that turns you off, you probably won't like

15:21

any of his movies, although I think this is one of

15:24

the least mean that he's made so far. I

15:26

don't know, Sam, do you have a strong

15:28

Lanthimos feeling? I do. I

15:30

mean, I want to say that this, I just was, I really

15:32

just want to get this phrase on the record because as

15:35

Steve was describing it, I think you could do worse than

15:37

thinking of this movie as sort of like a horny steampunk

15:39

Frankenstein. That sort of

15:41

aesthetic of it. That's basically

15:43

what it is. Yeah. So please quote

15:45

me in the ads. But

15:47

yeah, he loves this idea.

15:50

His very first

15:52

breakthrough movie, Dogtooth, which was nominated for

15:54

an Oscar is sort

15:56

of about an isolated

15:58

family that has been. teaching their children

16:00

sort of this very

16:03

particular made-up language for certain things.

16:05

And he really likes the idea

16:07

of constructive identity of

16:09

kind of starting from zero, wiping

16:12

away social contagion and the

16:14

inevitably failed attempts to kind of build

16:16

your own society outside of that. And

16:18

the style has gotten much more Rococo

16:21

as he's been able to work with

16:23

American Budgets in the favorites and this

16:25

movie and also moved into making period

16:27

films, which is always an excuse to

16:29

let your, you know, your craft

16:31

team go nuts, which they have done with

16:33

abandon. And

16:36

I, you know, I enjoy that a lot, but

16:38

I confess that this movie does not sort of

16:40

move me on any deeper level other than just

16:43

enjoyment. Okay, we will get

16:45

to that and more in the plus

16:47

segment. Fact check, I saw the favorite,

16:49

talked about it on the show and

16:51

remember loving it. Okay, this one is

16:54

called Poor Things. It's in theaters now.

16:56

Check it out and if you have a shoot us

16:59

an email, very curious what listeners think.

17:01

Let's move on. This

17:03

podcast is brought to you by Slate Studios and SAP.

17:08

How do you know when to seize the moment

17:10

for growth? When the opportunity arrives, you need to

17:13

be ready. That means future

17:15

proofing your business with a technology partner

17:17

like SAP and embracing

17:19

AI with confidence. My

17:23

name is Kavita Ganesan. I'm

17:25

the author of the business case for

17:27

AI and I advise leaders and tech

17:29

teams on how to go about AI

17:32

initiatives. AI is a

17:34

special type of software automation which

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tries to solve complex problems like

17:38

it can ingest lots of

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data and then render one decision.

17:43

Companies have barely scratched the surface

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with AI. If you take

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an industry like supply chain, their data is all

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over the place. You have data in procurement, you

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have data in sales, you have data in manufacturing.

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So you need a single platform to

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bring all of that data together

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and help analyze. companies

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are slowly going to start integrating

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AI into their workflows that will

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change the whole business landscape. So

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instead of doing all the low-level

18:10

work, people be the data creators

18:12

for AI systems. Having

18:14

AI in the loop

18:16

will help businesses become more sustainable

18:19

over the long term, survive different

18:21

problems, shutdowns. So I'm excited about

18:24

the prospects of that. Relevance,

18:27

reliability, responsibility. Futureproof

18:30

your business with SAP Business

18:32

AI. Head to sap.com/be

18:36

ready to learn more. This

18:39

podcast is brought to you by Slate Studios

18:42

and SAP. How

18:45

do you know when to seize the moment for

18:47

growth? When the opportunity arrives, you need to be

18:49

ready. That means futureproofing your

18:51

business with a technology partner like

18:53

SAP and embracing AI

18:56

with confidence. My

18:59

name is Kavita Ganesan. I'm

19:01

the author of the business case for

19:03

AI and I advise leaders and tech

19:05

teams on how to go about AI

19:08

initiatives. AI is a

19:10

special type of software automation which

19:12

tries to solve complex problems like

19:14

it can ingest lots of

19:16

data and then render one decision.

19:19

Companies barely scratch the surface with AI.

19:21

If you take an industry like supply

19:23

chain, their data is all over the

19:25

place. You have data in procurement, you

19:27

have data in sales, you have data

19:29

in manufacturing. So you need a single

19:32

platform to bring all of that data

19:34

together and help analyze

19:36

that data. Companies are slowly going

19:38

to start integrating AI into their

19:40

workflows that will change the whole

19:43

business landscape. So instead of doing

19:45

all the low-level work, people be

19:47

the data creators for AI systems.

19:50

Having AI in the

19:52

loop will help businesses become

19:54

more sustainable over the long

19:56

term, survive different problems, shutdowns.

19:59

So I'm I'm excited about the prospects of that.

20:02

Relevance, reliability, responsibility.

20:06

Future-proof your business with SAP Business

20:08

AI. Head to

20:10

sap.com/be ready to learn

20:12

more. All

20:17

right, now is the moment in our

20:19

podcast we discuss business. Dana, what

20:21

do you have? Steve, we have two items of

20:23

business this week. First of all, today, December 13th, is

20:26

you, the listener's last day to send questions

20:28

to our annual listener call-in episode. This is

20:30

a tradition we have every year where we

20:33

compile questions that people put on a

20:35

voicemail and then we answer them on our

20:37

holiday show. We're gonna be recording that next week

20:39

and we need some time to go through your

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at slate.com/culture plus once again, that's

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slate.com/culture plus. All right,

22:11

showtime. All right. Well,

22:13

Norman Lear died this past week. He was 101 years old,

22:15

sign of a clean conscience.

22:18

Maybe I don't know. He, of course, was

22:20

the driving force behind the revolution in American

22:22

television. He was the creator of such sitcoms

22:25

as one day at a time, the original

22:27

one, the Jefferson's mod, and of course, all

22:29

in the family, which is regarded as one

22:31

of the greatest TV shows of all time.

22:34

He was, I think, I'm

22:37

pretty sure he was the first showrunner, though

22:39

we didn't call it that then to achieve

22:42

widespread name recognition. His signature

22:45

was character driven comedy built

22:47

around very topical subjects. These

22:50

included, this is back in the 1970s,

22:54

huge hit TV shows addressed

22:56

head on issues of race,

22:58

class, gender, gay rights, abortion.

23:00

I mean, incredible, right? As

23:03

Times TV critic put it, these were

23:05

kind of public group therapy sessions dealing

23:08

with the aftermath of the 60s.

23:10

He described himself as an out

23:12

and out liberal, no apologies in

23:14

any direction here, here. Okay.

23:16

I think we have to listen to a clip

23:18

from, I think, his greatest achievement, the TV show

23:20

all in the family where husband and wife Archie

23:23

and Edith go grocery shopping. Archie,

23:25

of course, is played by Carol

23:27

O'Connor, Edith by Jean Stapleton. Let's

23:29

listen. Look at the

23:32

price on this here bread, 50 cents.

23:34

Take it back and buy the 11 cent bread we always eat.

23:37

Archie, bread ain't been 11

23:40

cents for years. Not since

23:42

you went in the service.

23:44

That was 1942. 1942.

23:49

I want to tell you that was the days,

23:52

Edith. Them was the days, boy. Everybody

23:54

in the country was working, plenty of money in

23:56

everybody's pocket. 11 cent bread. That's because

23:58

we had a beautiful war going. was done. We

24:01

did everything nowadays, huh? Boy, millions of people

24:03

out of work, no money in their pockets

24:06

like me, we're selling all our wheat. The

24:08

whiskey's got the 11 cent bread, we got

24:10

the 50 cent bread. I want

24:12

to tell you, this country's in trouble every time

24:14

they say, I'll break the piece. All

24:17

right, well, Julia, first of all, welcome back to the show.

24:20

Thank you all. What was your relationship to

24:22

Norman Lear? I think

24:24

this might be a segment where

24:26

our micro-generational differences actually make a

24:28

big difference because I watched a

24:30

ton of syndicated sitcom

24:32

reruns in the

24:35

80s growing up but the only

24:37

show that regularly appeared

24:39

was Jefferson's. I forget exactly which

24:41

Boston affiliate it sometimes was on

24:43

but I know that

24:45

indelible theme song and remember watching

24:47

it sometimes. And

25:00

I went back and watched a bunch of

25:03

episodes and shared some with my kids over

25:05

the weekend and I really haven't seen

25:07

very much of it. I'm familiar with

25:09

the characters, I know some of the

25:11

catch phrases, I'm aware

25:14

of the imprint but

25:18

I hadn't actually spent much time in

25:20

the company of these shows and

25:23

it was so interesting to

25:25

go back and encounter them

25:27

and what struck me

25:29

most was the underlying assumption in

25:32

all of them that a television

25:35

show was a kind of

25:38

cross-cultural convening opportunity

25:40

and obviously deciding

25:42

that that was the case and taking advantage of

25:45

that to look at the world rather than to

25:47

coddle people and look away from it was part

25:50

of Lear's brilliance but it's very

25:52

striking that sense of the

25:54

kind of national hearth that they give

25:56

which feels unfamiliar. Yeah,

25:59

that's a great question. great point in, I

26:01

mean these shows, let's be totally clear,

26:03

not only were they hit shows, right,

26:06

and in their way cutting edge,

26:08

they aggregated an immense plurality

26:11

of Americans. I

26:13

mean, I think reading all these obits and kind

26:15

of looking at overviews of Lear's career made me

26:18

realize that I grew up in a world of

26:20

Norman Lear TV to an extent I didn't even

26:22

realize, you know, because I think I also was

26:24

a little bit too young to, I was certainly

26:27

too young when all the family first aired to

26:29

actually understand what it was talking about, right?

26:32

I mean, it was there, it was on,

26:34

but I was a little kid hiding under

26:36

the couch while it was

26:38

on. But what I

26:40

started to realize on seeing how wide the

26:42

web extended of, you know, the spinoffs and

26:44

spinoffs of spinoffs and different kind of conceptual

26:47

worlds that he had created on television was

26:49

that the world of, you know,

26:52

just regular TV watching, like turn on

26:54

your four channel network TV in the

26:56

late 70s, early 80s and watch what

26:58

happens to be on in syndication was all

27:00

Norman Lear. And so

27:02

much of it had this really progressive

27:04

and inventive bent that at

27:06

the time just sort of seemed to me like, well,

27:08

that's what TV is. I was thinking

27:11

in particular of Good Times, his sitcom about

27:13

a black family in a Chicago housing project,

27:15

which I wouldn't say was one of my

27:17

favorite shows or like a show that was

27:19

particularly special to me growing up, but I

27:21

watched it almost every day because it was

27:23

in the afterschool syndicated lineup in which every

27:25

other show was about, you know, the white

27:28

middle class, right? So I would watch

27:30

Happy Days, Gilligan's Island, something else entirely

27:32

about white people and then Good Times

27:34

would be on. From

27:36

Television City in Hollywood. And

27:47

in reading about Good Times in some of our

27:49

material, I saw that, you know, it was somewhat

27:51

controversial, including with the stars, Esther Rolle and John

27:53

Amos, who played the mother and father of this

27:56

family in the projects,

27:58

who at some point I think complained that the

28:00

show was getting too broad and that the humor was too

28:03

sort of you know, racially cartoonish

28:05

that that the young actor Jimmy

28:07

Walker who played their son was sort of becoming

28:09

the show's star because of his funny catchphrases

28:12

and that it was losing basically its

28:14

its social commentary that it was trying to make

28:16

in favor of you know just being funny. That

28:21

all may be the case and this may be very legitimate

28:23

complaints but all I can say is that as a white

28:25

suburban kid who lived in much more of a happy days

28:27

world that show was

28:29

one of my few exposures to you

28:32

know an entirely black family on television.

28:34

So when I think about

28:36

the I don't know dozen or so

28:38

shows that he had going on and the millions

28:40

and millions of people as you say Steven at

28:42

Dave event television who were watching them, you know,

28:44

there were a lot of people getting exposed

28:46

to worlds they knew nothing about through Norman

28:49

Lear. Right and of course looking back

28:51

on it from the viewpoint of 2023

28:54

like what

28:56

a shame that a white male TV

29:00

auteur had to be the

29:02

medium through which you

29:04

know segments of white America

29:06

became acquainted with black reality. I mean

29:09

and I say black reality and air

29:11

quotes nonetheless as a

29:13

transitional figure from a totally

29:16

lily white prime time

29:18

lineup to the world we now

29:20

enjoy where there's up finally

29:23

belatedly a diversity

29:25

of creators You

29:28

need someone like Norman Lear and I think he

29:30

deserves credit for that He

29:33

was also responsive to the complaint that good times

29:36

by the Black Panthers by the way that good

29:38

times was reductive in that

29:40

it showed depicted yet again

29:43

black people in America as simply

29:45

poor and struggling with poverty in

29:47

the ghetto and the pathologies they're

29:50

in and and He

29:52

created the Jeffersons about a super

29:55

upwardly mobile black couple

29:58

entrepreneur husband who

30:01

moved to Manhattan, became an iconic

30:03

TV show and a huge hit.

30:06

To me a couple of things Bear sang

30:08

in Remembrance of Norman Lear. First was the

30:11

real serious out and out courage of

30:13

Maude, his show about a middle-aged feminist

30:16

woman having

30:18

an episode about abortion that

30:20

CVS desperately wanted them to

30:22

cancel. There was

30:24

a huge campaign of advertisers and

30:26

letter writers against it. He went

30:28

ahead, I believe it was aired

30:31

without advertisement and then it

30:33

received huge amounts of hate mail. You're

30:35

just scared. I am not scared. You

30:38

are and it's as simple as going to the dentist.

30:41

Now I'm scared. And

30:44

the author said it sort of turned Maude into

30:46

the Joan of Arc of middle-aged women in America

30:48

in a way. And then the second thing I

30:50

would say is that for all of

30:53

the topicality of the shows, all of the

30:55

family especially and bear in mind when this

30:57

is happening too, right? These shows are in

31:00

the family especially. Early 1970s

31:02

Kent State, Watergate, The

31:04

Fall of Saigon, OPEC

31:07

and then inflation and stagflation. I mean

31:09

during a period in America where public

31:11

life seems to be collapsing in ways

31:14

that are horrifying almost on

31:16

a daily basis to average Americans,

31:18

Norman Lear was there. In

31:21

a way both challenge and hold people's

31:23

hands that I think is improbably deft

31:25

of him. But

31:27

the second thing was there was a real prescience

31:29

to all in the family that I don't think

31:31

we should miss. Sociologists in the late 60s started

31:33

noticing a very distinct shift from

31:36

the Democratic Party to the Republican Party

31:38

in the direction of a backlash conservatism

31:40

by angry white men which if you

31:43

think about it in the 50 intervening

31:45

years has been a defining political fact

31:47

of this country for which Archie Bunker

31:49

was this really curious harbinger. And

31:51

what Lear tried to do in that

31:54

show was so delicate is he showed

31:56

him as a pontificating no

31:58

nothing bigot. that this is

32:00

still a human being and what

32:02

he's suffering from is a loss. And

32:05

I would never want to suggest that

32:07

Lear owed it to anybody to give

32:10

a humane or rounded portrait of a

32:12

man filled with that kind of hate.

32:14

But it was a far more interesting and

32:17

challenging and ambiguous show to have

32:19

this human being shown

32:22

as something more than a caricature while

32:24

really trying to understand what kind of

32:27

germ of toxicity was implanted in American

32:29

culture. And that to me makes it

32:31

I think one of the four or

32:33

five greatest TV shows of all time.

32:36

It's really interesting to go back and watch it

32:39

and actually just listening to the clip at the

32:41

beginning of this segment, I was struck

32:43

by how Trumpian he sounds. Even

32:45

some of the intonations, it's like, oh, Trump must

32:47

have watched this show growing up and been

32:49

like, great. I'll be right back. Which

32:51

many people did, by the way. Yeah,

32:54

as it was received by a lot of conservatives

32:56

for sure. Yeah, I

32:58

mean, there's a real echo there.

33:00

And I would recommend maybe pre-screeding

33:02

the episodes you might want to show

33:04

your 10-year-olds. There was certainly some language

33:07

that I would not have chosen to

33:09

show them on previewed just

33:11

because since this was a

33:13

show made by a white

33:16

person and sympathetic on

33:18

some level to

33:21

how it is that Archie Bunker came to

33:23

be Archie Bunker in this fictional world, there's

33:27

a willingness to portray and kind

33:29

of get laughs out of his

33:31

bigotry that doesn't land squarely

33:34

today. Even

33:36

though the intent of it is

33:39

clear and Blair's own

33:41

liberal bona fides are clear and his

33:43

responsiveness to criticism is admirable and

33:46

just the depth and breadth of his work is admirable.

33:49

Can you just, has any

33:51

modern cultural thing aged worse

33:54

than schmarsh-morshin? Like they

33:56

put fucking abortion on television in the 1970s

33:58

and then... In

34:00

the early 21st century with Judd

34:02

Apatow's knocked up, we're getting Schmush-Morschen.

34:04

Like, we can't even say the

34:06

word. You know what I think he should do? Take

34:09

care of it. Tell

34:11

me you don't want him to get an A

34:13

word. Yes, I do, and I won't say it

34:15

for little baby years over there, but it rhymes

34:18

with Schmush-Morschen. Yeah, Julia, that's

34:20

so true. Thinking about

34:22

that episode of Maude and reading about

34:24

it made me think of an interview

34:26

that I gave last year to a

34:28

documentarian who's making a documentary about the representation

34:30

of abortion on screen on TV and movies,

34:33

which is a great topic for a documentary.

34:35

And so I gave them a little interview about

34:37

it and was kind of researching that Maude episode

34:39

and some other big moments

34:42

of abortion representation in movies and

34:44

TV. And it is just remarkable the

34:46

degree to which we've gone back. Not

34:48

surprising because the law itself obviously has

34:50

gone way, way, way backwards pre-1973. Yeah,

34:54

exactly. The ground that Maude broke with B. Arthur in,

34:57

when would that have been, the late 1970s? It

35:01

is now thoroughly unbroken, right? Right.

35:03

And it has been completely sodded over again

35:06

to the point that we're saying Schmush-Morschen at

35:08

the movies and every character in a TV

35:10

show who gets pregnant and almost has an

35:12

abortion has some kind of convenient miscarriage or

35:14

changes their mind. Juno, you know, like again

35:16

and again and again in pop culture, we

35:18

get this double messaging about abortion. Like, oh,

35:21

we're so progressive. But of course our lovable

35:23

heroine would never actually do this. All

35:26

right. Well, Rest Infused, Norman Lee, are a

35:28

great American. And

35:30

if you haven't, you know, I would just look

35:32

for lists of like best episodes of All in

35:34

the Family in particular and watch one or two,

35:37

see what you think. All right, moving on. Apple

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36:45

right. Well, we're joined by Fleece, wonderful book

36:48

critic, culture writer, Laura Miller. Laura, welcome back

36:50

to the show. It's great

36:52

to be talking to you guys again. Yeah,

36:54

it's wonderful to have you back. You produced a very

36:57

cool top 10 books of the year list

36:59

we want to discuss. Setting it up, you

37:01

said, this year I wanted to read books

37:03

that did what only books can provide me

37:06

with the portrayal of the world

37:08

as rich and complex as the world itself. Here,

37:10

here, and then you go on to quote Zadie

37:12

Smith, who was on your list this year. A

37:15

person is a bottomless thing.

37:17

I love that. How about

37:19

if we start this way? Talk a little bit

37:22

about what's on the list, and then if you

37:24

would maybe extrapolate from that to if it's possible

37:26

this highly dubious

37:29

abstraction, but let's try it. The

37:32

year in books, what pattern was there?

37:34

What sort of fields did you get from the

37:37

book world this year from what you read

37:39

this year? Well,

37:41

there's the great books that I love this

37:43

year, and then there's the things going on

37:45

in the book world, which are often not

37:48

very happy. I think the biggest story of

37:50

the year were all the attempted book

37:52

bands in various

37:55

red counties around America and

37:58

the many heroic

38:00

attempts by librarians and

38:02

school children and parents

38:04

to counteract that.

38:08

So that's the news of the year in

38:11

books, but as always, there

38:13

are tons and tons of

38:16

really great books published every year

38:18

and that's what this list focused

38:20

on. All right, from the somewhat

38:24

depressing meta-story of the year

38:26

in books, let's go to the highly scintillating

38:28

specifics of your list. Pick

38:30

a couple of titles and let's start talking.

38:33

Well, one of the things I loved about The

38:35

Guest by Emma Cline, which is

38:37

sort of the book of the summer, is

38:40

that it depicts a particular kind

38:42

of person who is both incredibly

38:44

canny and incredibly self-destructive

38:46

at the same time. It's

38:50

a story of this young woman who's sort

38:52

of a failed model who is invited

38:56

to some older

38:58

rich boyfriend's beach house

39:00

in the Hamptons and she

39:02

can't really go back to New York because her

39:04

roommates have kicked her out for stealing stuff from

39:06

them and not paying the rent and she also

39:08

stole some money from this kind of a sinister

39:10

friend who's trying to get in touch with her

39:12

and then her boyfriend breaks up with her after

39:14

she does something embarrassing at a party and

39:17

she decides that she's going to get him

39:19

back over the course of

39:21

five days leading

39:23

up to his big Labor Day party and

39:26

she manages to sort of travel

39:28

all over the Hamptons persuading

39:31

various rich people that she belongs and

39:33

getting a place to sleep for the

39:35

night, getting a meal. It's like a

39:38

kind of a high-wire act

39:41

that involves all of this cleverness and

39:43

cannyness and at the same time her

39:45

ultimate goal, which is to get this

39:48

boyfriend who doesn't care about her at

39:50

all to take her back is completely

39:52

doomed. And I feel like I

39:54

have known women like this

39:56

in my life and it is really

39:58

the most persuasive portrait. of

40:00

how they think. Again,

40:03

it's like how do you make sense of

40:05

a person like that? There isn't a simple

40:07

explanation, as Zadie

40:09

Smith would undoubtedly very

40:12

much appreciate it. And

40:14

that's what I found with most of

40:16

these books, that there was a complexity

40:18

in human nature that eludes like simple

40:21

formulas of who's a good guy, who's

40:23

a bad guy, who's likable, who's not.

40:27

And those were the books I was drawn to both in

40:29

fiction and nonfiction. Laura, I

40:31

have not read a single book on your list. No,

40:33

wait, that's not quite true. I've read A Great Deal

40:35

of Doppelganger by Naomi Klein because we interviewed her on

40:37

the show. But I would not say that I've read

40:39

the whole book, only all the excerpts that I could

40:41

get a hold of. But there's

40:43

another contemporary novel on your list that I happen

40:45

to have heard a lot about this year because

40:47

I was on a long driving trip with a

40:50

very good friend. And I just asked him that

40:52

question. You ask, what are you reading? Reading anything

40:54

good? And he was reading one of the books

40:56

on your list, Burnham Wood by Eleanor Catton. And

40:58

we proceeded to have this long, he kind

41:01

of outlined the story. I mean, we had hours of driving

41:03

ahead. So he told me all about the book, what he

41:05

liked, what he didn't like, and we dug way into it.

41:07

So I feel like this is my second time hearing a

41:09

lot about Burnham Wood by Eleanor Catton. I now really wanna

41:12

read it. And I wonder if you could talk a bit

41:14

about that book. Yeah, so

41:16

this is kind of

41:18

the most all around satisfying

41:21

novel novel that I read

41:23

this year. And

41:25

it's basically the story of

41:27

a guerrilla gardening group. And

41:30

what they do is they find unused

41:32

pieces of land that belong

41:34

to somebody who's just sort of forgotten about them.

41:37

And they plant and harvest organic

41:39

produce, which they then give away

41:41

in their community. So there's this

41:43

sort of kind of

41:45

socialist, consensus operated,

41:48

it's that kind of group.

41:51

There are lots of them in the world. And

41:54

they find a big

41:56

piece of real estate sort of in the countryside

41:59

of New York. Zealand where this novel

42:01

is set, where Cat,

42:03

Eleanor Caton, the author is from. And

42:07

there's this housing development that was going to be built

42:10

but then it got way laid

42:12

and so nothing is happening with this piece of

42:14

land and so they decide

42:17

to actually go there and do a

42:19

much more serious operation.

42:22

But in the process, the woman,

42:24

the young woman who leads this

42:26

group meets this American tech billionaire

42:28

who is building

42:32

one of these super deluxe

42:36

bunkers that American tech billionaires are

42:38

always trying to set up in

42:40

New Zealand because they think there's going to

42:42

be an apocalypse and he

42:45

gets involved with them in various

42:47

complex ways. And it's

42:49

great because it's sort of a social

42:51

satire of people from all

42:53

different walks of life and

42:56

there's a secret and there's

42:59

adventure and there's skullduggery

43:02

and betrayal and

43:05

romantic triangles and all of this stuff.

43:08

It's just really fun to

43:10

read and very, you know,

43:12

manage to engage with contemporary

43:14

issues without being completely overwrought

43:17

or, you know,

43:19

and swamped by them, you know. It's

43:22

not a book by one of those people who's

43:24

like, I can't, the world is going to hell.

43:26

Oh my God, I can't do anything. You know,

43:28

she really kind of has a

43:31

firm grasp on all of these issues.

43:34

I'm curious, Laura, about some of the nonfiction

43:36

on your list. I've shared many times with

43:38

our listeners on this show that I, my

43:41

list as a working

43:43

person means I want to be drugged

43:45

by plot at bedtime and so I

43:47

don't read as much nonfiction as I

43:49

would like and there are so many

43:52

juicy and enticing sounding titles on your

43:54

list. I had heard with

43:56

that sort of fervent, I just read this and

43:59

you've got to read this from a few

44:01

people about the best minds,

44:03

the story of a 70s

44:06

friendship between bright boys and

44:08

how one of them grows up and struggles with

44:10

mental illness and schizophrenia and more.

44:14

So I'm still eager to read that. But

44:17

I was also curious about Anansi's Gold, which I had not

44:19

heard as much about. Can you share a bit more about

44:21

that one? Yeah, the reason

44:23

you haven't heard about it is because

44:25

it was really just published like last

44:27

month. And it's the

44:29

story of, well,

44:31

it's about, it's basically

44:34

this guy who is

44:36

at the center of this story

44:38

is this incredible con man who

44:41

I guess you know,

44:43

you could say that he sort of invented

44:46

an early version of one of those

44:48

Nigerian 419 scams

44:52

where he basically, you know, claimed that

44:54

he had access to all of this

44:56

money that had been hidden away by

44:58

the late

45:00

president of Ghana, you know, hidden away

45:03

so that corrupt Ghana officials

45:05

and the West couldn't get at

45:07

it. And he could get that

45:09

cast, but he just needed some money up front

45:11

in order to retrieve it. And

45:13

this guy just managed to

45:16

get money from people in

45:18

America, in particular, a lot of

45:20

this centers around Pennsylvania,

45:23

Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. And

45:27

in Ghana and really all over the

45:29

world, including a former

45:31

US Attorney General, John Mitchell, in fact.

45:35

And he, you know, it's one of

45:37

those stories that, you know, people love

45:39

a con man story, you know, like

45:42

how clever and how audacious he is,

45:44

and his big cars and

45:46

cigars and his tailored suits and

45:49

his incredible ability to slip out

45:51

of the clutches of people just

45:53

as they're realizing what he's

45:55

really up to. But it's also

45:57

a really great depiction

46:00

of sort of the dilemmas

46:02

of post-colonial countries, particularly in

46:04

Africa. So

46:07

it's fun, but there's also some meat

46:09

to it as well. I've

46:12

always found Ghana to be really

46:14

fascinating, so I was particularly interested in the fact that it was

46:16

set there. All right. Let's pivot

46:19

a little bit. Dana, you have a top 10 film

46:21

list. I'm always ... I love

46:23

... I mean, there are

46:26

so many best Danas, but maybe the best

46:28

Dana is like peevish

46:30

Dana, grumpy Dana, and I like that

46:32

you produce a beautiful top 10 list

46:34

every year, and yet you

46:37

peeve about it in the smartest, most

46:39

interesting ways. So Dana, go.

46:42

Talk to me about making your top 10. I think this may

46:44

be the first top 10 list I've written in

46:46

three or four years. It doesn't basically begin with

46:49

some sort of disclaimer about how much I dislike

46:51

making lists, and the culture of

46:53

lists will send us all to hell. At the

46:55

same time, I absolutely love reading other people's lists,

46:57

including Laura's list of the best books. I completely

47:00

... Why do we keep assigning them? I

47:02

know, and that's why I'm going to stop being

47:04

so grumpy about it, because the fact is that

47:07

once I start writing about the movies and I

47:09

think about it as just an opportunity to talk

47:11

about movies that I loved, it's great. It has

47:13

more to do with a certain

47:15

kind of bro-y competitiveness

47:19

or kind of zero-sum

47:22

logic that starts to accumulate around lists. But if

47:24

you can sort of shake that off and just

47:26

write them, I can come

47:28

around to seeing why they're great. Given

47:31

that I don't keep up with contemporary fiction or

47:33

nonfiction at near the level that a book critic

47:35

does, it is just great to get an overview

47:37

of a year that, to me, things would

47:40

have had to filter through a lot of word of

47:42

mouth or a lot of popular acclaim

47:44

in order for me to hear about them. To

47:46

me, part of what a list does is that you

47:49

get to bring forward things that people might not otherwise

47:51

get to see. I have a question about list-making

47:53

in general for Laura, which is that when I'm

47:55

trying to compile one of these year-end lists, I

47:58

would be lying if I said that it wasn't... that

48:00

a lot of the choices weren't based on wanting my

48:02

piece of writing to be successful you know i don't

48:04

want to talk about too many movies that

48:06

i feel like i've already said what i have to

48:08

say about or that resemble each other so that i'm

48:10

saying the same kind of thing you know like a

48:13

part of it is is honestly displaying your

48:15

own virtuosity as a writer

48:17

or your own variance and taste

48:19

as a critic and uh...

48:21

and i don't think that's a bad thing i think

48:23

you know lists are a piece of writing that you're

48:26

trying to make it effective as you can so that's

48:28

the reason for example i might say hey i haven't

48:30

talked about anything funny you know i'm gonna pick

48:32

a movie that the comedy so that i get

48:34

to not have a gloomy tone for every single

48:36

blurb on my list and i'm wondering

48:38

if laura goes into the project with

48:40

some similar vein thoughts about her own

48:42

writing and that is an

48:44

interesting question because i think i i

48:47

think of it much more in

48:50

a service-y way i mean not at the

48:52

in journalism people say service journalism it's usually

48:54

like a little considered to be a lower

48:57

level of writing than what

48:59

a critic does but i think part

49:01

of the case it takes so long to read

49:03

a book and because book reviewing

49:05

is not like

49:08

as visible as movie and

49:10

tv reviewing uh... that

49:12

that you know people may

49:14

see one or two opinions on a book where

49:16

they may see a lot if it's a big book

49:18

like the zadie smith book or something it's

49:22

just really hard to sort

49:24

of for people to really

49:26

gather enough input

49:29

to to make that decision and

49:32

it's also you know it's it's

49:35

it's a huge investment of their time you

49:37

know you can watch a movie in two

49:39

hours but it takes usually ten to fifteen

49:41

hours to read a book so people are

49:44

much more cautious about what

49:46

they read a lot of the time

49:48

and so i'm mostly just

49:50

focused on uh...

49:53

trying to be really honest because

49:56

there is this tendency to to

49:59

include things sort of automatically or to

50:01

exclude things because they've

50:03

been written up a lot. Like sometimes a book is on

50:05

a lot of best of lists

50:07

because it's really, really good. And

50:10

so I'm constantly, I think what

50:12

I'm constantly doing is saying to

50:14

myself, what will the

50:17

person who's reading this do with this

50:19

information? And then how will they feel

50:21

about me if they read this book?

50:24

Because I don't want anybody to go,

50:27

I can't believe she came in to read

50:29

that. People get really mad

50:31

about feeling misled

50:34

about the qualities of books. And

50:38

I do lean towards things that have a really

50:40

strong narrative. So I was really happy to hear

50:42

that Julia's appetite,

50:44

reading appetite was wedded because I

50:46

want to make them sound like

50:48

books that I had to put

50:50

down even if they are a

50:52

narrative of childhood friendship or

50:55

a doomed

50:57

love affair or like a crazy

51:01

identity issue on the internet. I

51:04

want people to feel

51:06

like they were entertained as

51:08

well as informed and impressed

51:11

and enlightened by these books.

51:14

Oh, excellent. All right. Laura

51:16

Miller is the book critic for Slate. Laura,

51:18

it's just a delight to have you

51:20

back on the show. I wish it were easier for

51:22

us to cover books. We'd have you on all the

51:24

time, but let's find an excuse soon. Okay,

51:27

I'm always up for it. Excellent.

51:30

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52:04

right, now is the moment in our podcast when we

52:06

endorse Dan. Now, what do you have? Steve,

52:08

I think I'll tag on to our Norman Lear segment, something

52:10

that I wanted to get into, but there was just too

52:13

much else to say about his massive

52:15

career and influence, which is that Norman

52:18

Lear was really working in the heyday

52:20

of TV theme songs and introductory, whatever

52:22

you call them, credits sequences, title sequences.

52:25

And I was saying in our segment that I was maybe born a

52:28

little bit too late to experience shows like All

52:30

in the Family in real time, as anything

52:32

else than something my parents were watching while

52:34

I played Underneath the Chair. But

52:36

I do remember, indelibly, and can probably still sing

52:38

most of the lyrics to the All in the

52:41

Family theme song. Also the

52:43

instrumental Sanford and Son theme song, a

52:45

show we didn't talk about, but another

52:47

Norman Lear show about black life had

52:49

an incredible, just a really funky, jazzy,

52:51

wonderful theme song that I could call to mind at

52:54

any moment. And

52:59

I didn't realize this until researching it, but the

53:01

Sanford and Son theme, which has a title, it's

53:03

called The Street Beater, is actually composed by Quincy

53:05

Jones, who I think was a friend of Norman

53:07

Lear's and worked with him a lot. So

53:09

I think that my endorsement is go on

53:12

YouTube and just call yourself

53:14

up some Norman Lear introductory sequences, and

53:16

you will hear some really, really great

53:18

songs. I mean, if TV shows had

53:20

themes like that in our day now,

53:23

they would all be hitting the pop

53:25

charts. They're just such incredibly catchy tunes.

53:28

That's great. Julia, what about you? Okay,

53:31

my endorsement this week is going to double

53:33

as a one-item gift guide for our listeners.

53:36

There must be people on your list for whom you

53:38

want to give an overpriced,

53:41

delicious, delicious smelling

53:43

body wash. Just kind of

53:45

like, who doesn't need soap? Everybody needs

53:48

soap, you know? It's like a

53:50

baby luxury, right? So the

53:53

company is Corpus. The

53:55

flavor is number green. Please forgive

53:58

them for naming the flavor. number

54:00

green, obviously green is not a number, but

54:03

the scent is bergamot, pink lemon, orange

54:06

blossom and cardamom, which are all

54:08

the good scents. And

54:12

it's a great gift. Corpus, number green,

54:14

delicious. Snap it up

54:16

if you've got some last minute gifties who

54:18

would like this item. Wow,

54:21

Julia, knowing that you're somebody who

54:23

reacts really negatively to cloying commercial

54:25

scents, I take anything for

54:27

a scented product, any recommendation of yours

54:29

very seriously. This is

54:31

truly worth checking out. Brilliant.

54:34

All right, so this week I'm going to go

54:36

a little esoteric, but my daughter just sent me

54:38

a quote. Should

54:40

philosophy amongst its other conceits imagine

54:42

that someone might actually want to

54:44

follow its precepts and practice, a

54:47

curious comedy would emerge. Guess

54:50

who said this? Wrote it.

54:53

Who's one of the great

54:56

non-philosopher philosophers? Larry David. Close.

54:58

Who's the other great non-philosopher,

55:00

philosopher of all time? Soren,

55:07

Soren, anybody? Anybody? Soren?

55:10

Kierkegaard? He is a philosopher. I

55:12

was thinking about the world of people who are

55:15

not called philosophers. I said

55:17

one of the great non-philosopher philosophers of

55:19

all time, and that is absolutely what

55:21

Kierkegaard is, Jane Austen. You're splitting philosophical

55:23

hair, Steve. Anyway, it comes from Fear

55:25

and Trembling, one of my favorite books

55:28

of all time. The funny

55:30

thing is that Kierkegaard,

55:32

I mean, was Kierkegaard a Christian philosopher? I mean,

55:34

sort of yes and sort of no. He

55:37

was trying to carve out what actual

55:39

faith would look like in spite of

55:41

a very oppressive Danish church,

55:44

establishment church, but he's so much

55:46

more. I

55:48

mean, he really is the originator of what

55:51

we think of as existentialism, for better and

55:53

for worse, but he is the

55:55

first, I think, real existentialist. But

55:57

even more than that, what he's really trying to do in a special way

55:59

is to make a especially in that book, which

56:01

is very easy. It's short, it's

56:03

aphoristic, it's incredibly beautiful book.

56:05

It's truly one of the greatest books ever

56:07

written and people should read it. Is he's

56:10

trying to understand anxiety. And

56:12

he is the great philosopher of like

56:14

varieties of dread or anxiety or sort

56:17

of discomfort, our relationship to the horizon

56:19

of the future and therefore ourselves and

56:21

the present. And it's so

56:23

poetic, it's a really beautiful book. It

56:26

was my favorite, probably my favorite book from

56:28

my college days. And I'm so

56:30

happy that independently of me, I never talked

56:32

with her about Kierkegaard. My older daughter at

56:34

college has discovered it. So

56:37

it's Kierkegaard, the book, Fear and Trembling.

56:39

Check it out. Julia,

56:45

thank you so much. Thanks, Steve.

56:48

Thanks, Dana. Thank you, Steven.

56:51

You will find links to some of the

56:53

things we talked about today at our show

56:55

page, that's slate.com/culturefest. You can email us at

56:57

culturefest at slate.com. Our

57:00

introductory music is by Nicholas Patel. Our

57:02

production assistant is Kat Hong. Our producer

57:04

is Cameron Drews. For Dana Steven, Julia

57:06

Turner, Sam Adams and Laura Miller. I'm Haman Mackeft.

57:09

Thank you so much for joining us. We

57:11

will see you soon. Hey,

57:26

everybody. It's Tim Heidecker. You

57:34

know me, Tim and Eric,

57:36

bridesmaids and Fantastic Four. I'd

57:39

like to personally invite you to listen to Office

57:41

Hours Live with me and my co-hosts, DJ

57:43

Doug Pound. Hello. And Vic

57:45

Berger. Howdy. Every week we

57:47

bring you laughs, fun games and lots of other surprises.

57:49

It's live. We take your Zoom calls. We

57:51

love having fun. Excuse me. That

57:54

song. Vic said something. I like

57:56

having fun. I like to

57:58

laugh. The

58:00

people who can make it Please

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