Slate Culture Feed

Hosts Alex Kirshner, Lindsay Gibbs, and Ben Lindbergh discuss the thrilling World Baseball Classic semifinal between Team USA and the Dominican Republic, as well as the missed calls, Navy SEAL visits, and other strange drama surrounding the tournament. Then the panel previews NCAA March Madness tournament before closing with a look at the expanding connections between Jeffrey Epstein and figures across the sports world.

In this week’s bonus episode for Slate Plus members, the hosts chat about Bam Adebayo’s historic 83-point run against the Washington Wizards last week.

WBC: (4:52): The called strike heard round the world
March Madness (23:01): Chalk talk.
Epstein and Sports (42:01): The revolting revelations about Steve Tisch

(Note: time codes are only accurate for Slate Plus members, who listen ad-free.)

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You can email us at [email protected].

Podcast production and editing by Kevin Bendis, with production assistance from Patrick Fort.
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On today’s episode, guest host Scaachi Koul is joined by journalist and content creator Melanie Hamlett to talk about the trend of wives who make content about the husbands who seem to hate them. Melanie has covered the toxic dynamics of some heterosexual relationships for years, including a viral 2019 article for Harper’s Bazaar. She was recently interviewed as part of an article for The Cut called I Love My Husband (Who Hates Me).

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This podcast episode is produced by Vic Whitley-Berry, Daisy Rosario, and guest host Scaachi Koul.
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On this week’s monster mash, Steve, Dana, and Julia gather around the proverbial reanimation laboratory to take on the nutty, goth, and unbridled The Bride! Maggie Gyllenhaal’s feminist—or not, it’s up for debate—retelling of Frankenstein features a truly committed performance from Jessie Buckley. Do the disjointed pieces add to a coherent whole? They discuss.

Next, they take a look at Paul McCartney: Man on the Run, the Morgan Neville documentary about the moment when the legendary songwriter and rockstar stopped being a Beatle and had to become something else.

Finally, they wade through the morass of titles like How to Tame a Silver Fox and Ms. CEO’s Baby Daddy Is the Merchant of Death to explore the exceedingly cheap and increasingly popular world of vertical micro-dramas via the app ReelShort.

In a bonus episode for Slate Plus subscribers, they tackle the question of when, in fact, one becomes an adult—inspired by a recent piece in The New Yorker by Shayla Love.

And if you’re watching the Oscars this week, don’t miss a chance for a special live pre-show with your fave Gabfest critics. Dana joins Isaac Butler, Nadira Goffe, and Sam Adams on Thursday, March 12, for an Oscars preview unlike any other. They’ll weigh in on the sinners and saints of this year’s award season.

Endorsements

Dana: The compilation of Kris Kristofferson songs The Essential Kris Kristofferson, especially the first disc.

Julia: The Helen Garner novel The Spare Room. Also her new LA-based news outlet, L.A. Material, launching next week.

Steve: Jean Guéhenno's account of life in Occupied France Diary of the Dark Years, 1940-1944.

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Email us your thoughts at [email protected].

Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch. Production assistance by Daniel Hirsch.

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On today’s encore episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by sociologist and content creator Josh Lora, who goes by @tellthebeees on TikTok and Substack. In his viral piece, “The Mainstreaming of Loserdom,” Lora explores how a generation of people is becoming proudly anti-social, often in favor of staying home on their phones. While less and less people may be partying, they’re not exactly happy about it. Are we doomed to doomscroll, or can we fight for our right to party again?

This podcast is produced by Vic Whitley-Berry, Daisy Rosario, and Kate Lindsay.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Eyes Wide Shut opened in the summer of 1999, it was widely considered a disappointment. This final film from legendary director Stanley Kubrick had been sold as an erotic thriller, and potentially even a peek into the real sex lives of its then-married stars, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. But Eyes Wide Shut was stranger than that: a meditative art film whose much-hyped orgy scene is more creepy than sexy, run by a cabal of rich and powerful men who prey on young women.

But Eyes Wide Shut has received a burst of new attention in the last few years, amid constant revelations about a real-life cabal of rich and powerful men who prey on young women. Across the internet, cinema sleuths have been asking: is it possible Eyes Wide Shut was not fictional? Was Stanley Kubrick trying to warn the world about a real conspiracy? And if so… was he murdered for it?

In this episode of Decoder Ring, we follow Lane Brown—a lifelong Kubrick fan and features writer for New York Magazine—as he investigates this conspiracy theory and what it says about how we deal with ugly facts and murky fictions.

This episode was written and produced by Max Freedman and edited by Willa Paskin. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Sources for This Episode
Barbezat, Michael. “‘Pizzagate’ and the Nocturnal Ritual Fantasy: Imaginary Cults, Fake News, and Real Violence,” The Public Medievalist, May 4, 2017.

Brown, Lane. “The Eyes Wide Shut Conspiracy,” New York Magazine, Dec. 17, 2025.

Ebiri, Bilge. “An Oral History of an Orgy,” New York Magazine, June 27, 2019.

Nicholson, Amy. “The Year Tom Cruise Gave Not One but Two Dangerously Vulnerable Performances,” The New York Times, Aug. 27, 2024.

Raftery, Brian. “Dream Team: Cruise, Kidman, Kubrick, and the making of Eyes Wide Shut,” New York Magazine, Apr. 15, 2019.

Shapiro, Lila. “What I Learned After Watching Eyes Wide Shut 100 Times,” New York Magazine, July 1, 2019.

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