Culture Gabfest “Harry Styles: Your Mom’s Favorite Hottie” Edition

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Speaker 1: This Ad Free podcast is part of your Slate Plus membership. You.

Speaker 2: I’m Stephen Metcalf and this is the Slate culture. Gabfest Harry Styles your mom’s favorite Hottie Edition. It’s Wednesday, June 8th, 2022. On today’s show, Chippendale Rescue Rangers is an animated plus live action feature from Disney. The venerable pair of cartoon chipmunks they date back to the 1940s are here, voiced by John Mulaney and Andy Samberg. And then before the comedian Norm Macdonald died last September from cancer, he recorded an alone at home version of his final set. The resulting product, Norm Macdonald Nothing Special, is now out on Netflix with commentary from his A-list peers.

Speaker 2: And finally, Harry’s House is the new and intriguing album from the One Direction. Heartthrob Harry Styles will be joined by Carl Wilson, Slate’s music critic, to discuss it. Joining me first are Julia Turner, who’s the deputy managing editor, The L.A. Times. Hey, Julia. Hello. And, of course, Dana Stevens, who’s the film critic of Slate. Dana. Hey, how’s it going?

Speaker 3: Hey. Hey.

Speaker 2: All right. Well, the original Chippendale cartoon premiered in the 1940s. This pair of endearing animated chipmunks who get up to high jinks is a it’s a piece of Disney IP that had its heyday for about two decades in the forties and fifties. Then in the late eighties, it was rebooted on afternoon TV as something called Chippendale Rescue Rangers, which I’m told was a huge hit with latchkey Gen Xers. That perhaps explains why we now have Chippendale Rescue Rangers, a highly ironic reboot with some big comedy names behind it. As I said, up top, it’s a combination of animation and live action, but various kinds of animation. It’s got an interesting visual palette, and it’s a spoof on our seemingly bottomless appetite for nostalgia and callback culture. As I said, it’s voiced by John Mulaney and Andy Samberg. All right. We’re about to hear the two characters, Chippendale reuniting after a long time apart. The first voice you’ll hear is Andy Samberg as Dale.

Speaker 1: So what’s been up with you? Oh, you know, this that other vague things to fill the space of this conversation. Okay, well, you look the same. Yeah, thanks. And you look different. Hey, it’s no secret I had the CGI surgery done, and it’s done wonders rejuvenating my career. I’m actually starring in a play tonight. But, man, I tell you, the real hot ticket is rescue rangers. There’s even some buzz about a reboot. Someone started a Facebook fan page for it and everything from a Facebook fan page. But I’m just give those away. Oh, he’s full of it, Monty. No one’s talking about a rescue Rangers reboot except for him. What? The fans are hungry for it. Look, I came here to help Marty not get caught up in some Hollywood nonsense. So great to take this trip down memory lane, but I’ve got to go, Monty. If you’re really in trouble, you know how to find me. Dale, you were also here.

Speaker 2: Dana, let me turn to you first. You’re a film critic. I was surprised to discover this is getting some I wouldn’t say glowing notices, but pretty generous reviews. What did you make of it?

Speaker 4: I mean, I feel like in a way, maybe Julia would be the one to call on, because generationally she may relate to that. That rescue Rangers show you were talking about more than I do. That came out when I don’t know if Gen-X seems like the right category for when that came out, because if it was 89, 90, I don’t know. I mean, I was a young adult then, was completely unaware of the existence of that show. So a lot of the callbacks in this movie are utterly foreign to me.

Speaker 4: I went in thinking, Why is Julia making us see a movie about chipmunks that are going to have horrible mechanically sped up voices and be grating in annoying? So the fact that this movie wasn’t even pleasant to watch was a great surprise to me. I actually thought it was pretty funny and clever and sweet, and it seemed more in tune to me with the The Lonely Island sensibility, right? The comedy team that includes Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, who directed the movie. And I think Jorma TACCONE, the third member of the group, does some some voices in the background. It seemed like it was more in tune with their kind of sensibility, the sensibility of the team that made pop star, that, you know, spoof of pop music that we’ve discussed on the show. Then with whatever it is they’re spoofing from the eighties and nineties. But I would say the cultural property to keep in mind when deciding if you want to see the Chippendale movie or not is not a kid’s movie and not even necessarily, you know, something to do with that 8990 cartoon.

Speaker 4: But who framed Roger Rabbit? Because what this is really all about, this movie, technically speaking, is, you know, having the fun of mixing animation of different styles together. You know, when you hear those two chipmunks talking in that clip voiced by John Mulaney and Andy Samberg, one of them is CGI and one of them is, you know, old fashioned, 2D drawn animation. And, you know, you also see Roger Rabbit himself in this movie. And, you know, everybody’s wandering around in the background from sort of silly symphony era Disney characters to, you know. Disney princesses. And I don’t know what all it sort of takes place in one of those half ton half human universes that seems to have its own rules. I’m not sure those rules make complete sense or that this movie does that much this interesting. It’s not as good a movie as who framed Roger Rabbit, but it’s got at least a few laughs per scene and some really pleasing voice work, and I had a good time.

Speaker 2: Julia I’m not sure what’s sweeter. The fact that Dana went into this movie thinking that Chippendale were Alvin and the Chipmunks, or the fact that she still doesn’t seem to know that they’re not.

Speaker 3: I guess this is where.

Speaker 5: I have to confess for the record that I don’t remember what voice they had. Although I am generationally, I think just like a year or two older than the prime Disney programming block. I have to say, the main the main memorable thing about that 80 show is the theme song Back.

Speaker 6: Back to back.

Speaker 5: The fact that our clip was like people talking people, people, chipmunks talking in this movie. And rather, rather than just the theme song from the old show, which is like the main thing to be nostalgic for is, is, you know, my my main complaint.

Speaker 3: This is clever and also.

Speaker 5: Too clever. Like clever rather than good. Clever rather than moving. Clever. Rather than, uh. Than. Than something that transcends its own nostalgic self. Like it is extremely full of Hollywood in-jokes about animation styles and um, you know, it.

Speaker 3: It.

Speaker 5: It’s, it is entertaining if you find yourself watching it, but it’s hard to imagine that it’s going to create a next generation of Chippendale rescue Rangers fans. Although I will say it probably did have the intended Disney plus effect in our household where I watched the beginning of it with my children because my husband, to describe all the shows of the Disney afternoon programming block, which he’s a few years younger than me.

Speaker 5: So I think he watched a bit more of it, caused it to play on YouTube theme songs of all of those shows, including Darkling Duck and the other ones, all of which were very good at theme songs. I mean, and then later that night on Disney plus the children watched a bunch of old Darwin ducks instead of anything to do with Chippendale or this movie. They were not interested in finishing it with me. But like Lo, the IP was revivified. So and the nostalgia, the nostalgia works. So I think I was a little disappointed because there was enough hype about this movie that I was hoping for a little more.

Speaker 5: Nevertheless, many, many of the jokes about the mechanics of Hollywood and particularly the evolution of animation styles are very funny. They they go to the valley and it’s the uncanny valley. And the. Seth Rogan there’s a bit about a character Seth Rogen plays and his dead eyed Polar Express stare.

Speaker 3: Down.

Speaker 5: The middle distance where he can actually connect with the other animated characters. That is worth the price of admission to.

Speaker 4: The degree.

Speaker 5: That style, the look.

Speaker 4: And sound of that character. And Seth Rogan’s incarnation of him is my favorite thing in the movie.

Speaker 1: Are you talking to us? Obviously, I said, Who are you? Well, right. But in fairness, it looks like you’re talking to that window. No, it actually looks like I’m.

Speaker 2: Looking right at you. Yeah. I mean, I think you’ve pinpointed the two times I cracked a smile while watching this. I mean, I find it funny that Disney is the last person to learn what pretty much everyone else in American life figured out 30 years ago, which is that if you strategically poke fun at yourself, you’ll be forgiven for almost anything, including being Disney.

Speaker 2: But I, you know, I just feel like at this point we’re piling meta upon meta. I what I dislike most about combining those two observations together, what I dislike most about this movie is this idea that you can get away with. You can excuse yourself for having nothing to say, no real story. The cynical way in which you’re feeding our nostalgia addiction by being ironic about irony just doesn’t have the carrying weight that it used to. We’re so many decades into that move. It goes back to like politicians appearing on Saturday Night Live. I just can’t I have to say, Dana, like Steve, the Curmudgeon disappeared for a long time. And then last week we saw Top Gun. And I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get the genie back in the bottle. I, I, I really resent that having to watch this fucking movie.

Speaker 3: Tom Cruise crank re crank of idea. Oh, my God. Well, you.

Speaker 2: Know, they they did viva fight ip and they rick rectified me.

Speaker 3: I.

Speaker 5: I there was a reason then, craig, steve was, you know, hailed as a conquering crank hero.

Speaker 3: Yes.

Speaker 5: I think that’s part of what I was trying to say when it when I said that this movie failed to transcend its own cleverness, like it feels very hermetically sealed in the the junkyard of Disney IP. But I think your point that it’s an interesting evolution and that Disney was slow to realize that making fun of itself was the thing that it could and should do is interesting because tonally, it almost feels retro to be like, Hey, check it out. We’re making fun of all of our IP. And it reminds me of our conversation about Wreck-It Ralph two a few years ago.

Speaker 5: Remember, there’s that really funny scene with all the Disney princesses kind of hanging together and hanging out with an LLP. And it’s amusing. And I remember saying at the time, like, Disney should make this movie, but they’ll never make this movie where all the princesses gang together. So that’s my main takeaway from the Chippendale reboot, is that the the the Princess Supergroup movie could happen and that should happen. That’s that’s what I hope to see next coming. Out of this film.

Speaker 2: I don’t know where to take this conversation next. But the most intriguing thing to me is precisely what generation or Microgeneration Julia Turner is.

Speaker 4: She’s Catalino.

Speaker 3: We’ve talked about this.

Speaker 4: She’s the nonexistent media category. They’re all nonexistent media categories.

Speaker 5: But I still send people to that amazing Doris Rivera article defining Generation Catalino, a.k.a. the generation that was in high school when my so-called life came out. A.K.A. people who are exactly, exactly, exactly in between Gen X and millennial, which is the micro generation that I am part of. So if you think as Gen Xers, you enjoy complaining about how the culture slights, you just think about how slighted you might feel of your generation. Catalino. This, I think is a few years past as though maybe I think this might be like elder millennial peak elder millennial content.

Speaker 4: Oh great. This is exactly what media needs is more little micro discourses about complaining generations. But Julia speaking of generations and complaining, I was going to ask about your son’s resistance to the show. They’re eight, right? Or are they nine now?

Speaker 3: Nine now.

Speaker 4: They’re nine. So I mean, they’re more or less right in the age group, I would imagine. Older kids, right. That might get some of the jokes in this and that maybe Disney is trying to capture with it. And I wonder what you whether you were surprised by their boredom with it or what you attribute it to. Exactly. I mean, is this a movie for adults?

Speaker 3: I it had that feeling of it. I mean, to be clear, they watched.

Speaker 5: Half an hour uncomplaining and zoned out in the manner of of little people engaged in an entertainment. But then when I said, Hey, do you guys want to watch the second half with me or, you know, I got to watch the rest of it, blah, blah. They were like, man, they they were so they were not bored or disaffected during but they were not so hooked. They were like, I got to find out what happens.

Speaker 3: And I think that. That makes sense.

Speaker 5: Like the you know, and John Mulaney and Andy Samberg are wonderful voice actors and there is a like charming little plot about their friendship and can they ever make peace for the wounds of long ago? Like it’s perfectly, competently done? The emotional stakes of the film, it’s not like there aren’t any there, but that emotionally competent plot, I think pretty clearly signals that it is just a scaffolding upon which to hang a bunch of jokes about IP. And, you know, I think my boys were as bewildered by all the characters as poor Steve, who didn’t know who the hell was going past him on the screen. So they were in the same boat of like, what is.

Speaker 3: All this for?

Speaker 5: Forget it. And, you know, so I think actually, like, the real purpose is the is the parents being like, sure, let’s try this. I remember it from my childhood and the kids having whatever response they have. And then really it’s to get to the parents playing all the theme songs on YouTube. Like that is the point. And we were, we got God, we played the theme. So I will wait for the Dark Duck reboot next.

Speaker 2: All right. We will end on that note of optimism, kindness and critical elan. That was great. A great summary of what this was. All right. The movie is Chippendale Rescue Rangers. It’s on Disney Plus streaming. It’s not in theaters. That’s where you catch it online. If you happen to be micro generationally appropriate to this segment and want to push back on it or whatever, whatever you have to say, we’d love to hear it. Email us. Okay. Moving on.

Speaker 2: All right. Now is the moment in our podcast. We take a little pause and we talk business. Dana What? What do we have this week?

Speaker 4: Stephen I actually have two items of business today, not just one. I’ll tell you about our Slate Plus segment in a minute. But first of all, it is our first show in June. So what do you think that might mean in terms of long term Gabfest history and tradition?

Speaker 2: You know.

Speaker 3: Can we just drop a beat behind this question like a steady, loping beat?

Speaker 4: That’s right. Picks up a Tom Collins because it’s summer strut time. We’re putting out a call to listeners for your favorite songs of the summer. Now, that does not necessarily mean the head of the summer. In fact, it usually isn’t. It could be a hit of many Summers Gone By, a song that was never a hit, but some sort of song that brings up those summer vibes that make you want to strut down the hot asphalt with your buzz on. So we’re going to put out the call now. I’m not exactly sure when the show will happen, I imagine, late in the summer, because we’re going to need some time to compile the list and then listen to the list. And going by recent years, we have literally a full, sleepless day worth of music to listen to, usually to get through for the summer straight edition. So please, listeners, send in your candidates. You can send a link to them on Spotify or just the title of the song. And please put Summer Street in the subject line of the email so that our beloved production assistant Nadira knows to compile those all in a Spotify playlist will also make those playlist public so you can listen to them. And at some point in the summer, we will all weigh in on our favorite summer songs.

Speaker 2: Oh yeah, funniest show of the year by far.

Speaker 4: Our only other item of business today is to talk about our Slate Plus segment, which comes from a question from a long time listener, a fan of the podcast. I think he’s called in and left voicemails for us before too, in our question episode. James Cowan and James Cowan asks What is your ideal pace for enjoying cultural works? The three of you obviously have many of your cultural works chosen for you, and you have obligations to reflect on much of what you see and to talk about it with other people. But if it were up to you, how many TV shows and movies would you watch? How many books would you read? What would your ideal cultural mix be and what would the pace be?

Speaker 4: I love this question because as somebody who’s been processing cultural material at a rate that feels faster than is humanly possible for 15 plus years, I like to get to ask, what would life be like if you were not a critic and you were just watching and reading stuff for fun? I hadn’t really thought about that fun, the concept of watching stuff for fun in a while. So if you’re a Slate Plus member, stick around. You can hear me. Julia and Steve, reflect on that question about pacing our cultural consumption. If you’re not a Slate Plus member, you can sign up today at Slate.com, slash culture plus. All right, Stephen, back to the regularly scheduled program.

Speaker 2: Okay. Well, two years ago, the standup comedian and SNL veteran Norm MacDonald decided on the spur of the moment to record a set that he’d written for an upcoming Netflix special. He was due to undergo stem cell surgery the following day for his recurring cancer, and he wanted to make absolutely sure that the material did not die with him. He survived the surgery, but thanks to Corona was not able to perform the set live. MacDonald died this past September and now Netflix has released that home taping. It’s called Norm MacDonald Nothing special. Included within it is a post set roundtable that features some of his A-list peers Dave Letterman, Dave Chappelle, Molly Shannon and Adam Sandler on and on. Let’s see. Let’s listen to a clip.

Speaker 7: Yeah, nerds, lately everybody has a opinion. And I you know, when I was young, it wasn’t that way. You know, people would have maybe, I don’t know, six opinions. You know, sometimes you meet a guy, you’d have eight opinions. You go, God damn, that guy’s opinionated. But about six opinions. I’d be about Amazon or about food. You know the truth. People go Count Chocula. What the fuck is wrong with you? Stuff like that.

Speaker 7: You know, I mean, I have opinions. I mean, I have opinions that everybody holds, you know? I like I don’t know. Yellow’s the best color, you know, but I don’t know if you call that an opinion. You know, it’s just that it’s just a hold on. It’s my phone. Hello. I got it for you. I got a. I’m doing a special. On the TV comedy special. So I’ll call you back. Okay. Okay. Sorry about that, guys.

Speaker 2: Julia, let me start with you. I mean, that’s that really gives the feel of it. I like also that as per what his friends and colleagues indicate, after we watched the set and their little roundtables, you know that phone, but you just don’t know. Did he really get a call? Is it a bit? I mean, they talk about how remarkably layered Norm Macdonald sense of irony was as a person and as a performer to the point you just had. No, he just was disorienting. You with this odd mix of sincerity and and kind of glinting irony. What did you what do you make of this?

Speaker 3: Yeah, I had the same thought. There’s a moment.

Speaker 5: In the roundtable afterwards, you know, which has a really interesting air that we can get to where Dave Chappelle says you could never tell if he was setting something up or not. And that to me, is is Norm Macdonald comedy in a nutshell, because a lot of his jokes, if you go back and watch his old CONAN appearances, where these yarns I mean, sort of like, you know, guy, mischievous guy crouched by a fire like long yarns that ended up landing in some weird place that made you crack up. And CONAN is very eloquent on the roundtable afterwards.

Speaker 5: And in noting that there is this careful, careful carefulness several times, he says that Norm Macdonald was the most precise comedian ever in terms of word choice and even how to deliver words. He notes that he pronounces tbe wrong, even though he knows how to say TV. He knows it’s TV, but he calls it TV. But you hear in that clip. And so, you know.

Speaker 3: The thing that they don’t.

Speaker 5: Quite say, except for Letterman, he’s the.

Speaker 3: Most caustic.

Speaker 5: Of the bunch. Is that as the special? The taping doesn’t totally work, like it doesn’t deliver you the best of Norm MacDonald comedy, because the precision required to constantly be spinning a yarn that you can’t tell where it’s going and you can’t even tell. Like half the time you’re watching him, you’re like not even confident he’s going to land a joke, which is crazy because he’s been landing jokes very successfully. He had been for years and years, for decades. But he he almost plays with you and gives you the sense that, like, how could.

Speaker 3: He possibly.

Speaker 5: Pull this off?

Speaker 4: Yeah, I remember that right after he died, there was a story that was told often about him. And I think somebody touches on it in the roundtable as well, that there was some event in recent years, I think it was a roast or it was some kind of awards dinner that he came to with deliberately terrible set. And he had written an entire series of jokes that were meant to bomb. They were sort of like corny dad jokes or something. And the whole idea was that he was going to play with the audience’s expectations by just pushing forward with this this absolutely terrible material and that the mastery that these other comics, you know, he was sort of talked of as a comic’s comic. The mastery that they so admired was that he could do that. You know, he could he could stand in front of people and bomb and not have to succeed. And it all depended on this relationship he established with the audience and their discomfort. And without an audience with him, just, you know, speaking in this sealed capsule of, you know, just literally staring into a webcam and talking.

Speaker 4: I mean, if you didn’t know anything about Norm Macdonald and who he was and what his comedy was like, I feel like you would think, why are all these comedians talking about how legendary this guy is when, you know, I laughed out loud maybe twice in that entire that entire hour of jokes. But in a strange way, I feel like that is precisely what he may have been aiming for. It is a strange combination this hour of material of what seems to be meticulous writing of material, and also a strange kind of not knowing where he’s going and us not knowing whether the joke landed or not, and whether that fact reflects on us as an audience or on him as a comedian.

Speaker 4: And you do really see that Julia I think in the conversation afterwards, I thought I was going to have to turn off that conversation at first because it started off so cringe that they were all sort of, you know, obviously missing their friend and wanting to say kind things about him, but not really able to say great things about the set of comedy they had just witnessed. And just when I sort of thought like, I can’t watch this because it’s too painful. They started to talk about him as a person and their memories of other, you know, comedy that they’d seen him do or tours that they’d done with him in Adam Sandler’s case. And suddenly it became fascinating to watch them, you know, take apart his his comedy and the way it worked. But yeah, I mean, I would imagine that this would not have been put on the air without him saying, yes, I’m fine with this being aired. But it felt to me like watching somebody workshop a set of jokes.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Dana, I mean, there’s there is a range of responses, as you say. I mean, clearly, the most you know, the most tentatively anti-US is Letterman and the most vocally pro is Chappelle. And I feel as though Chappelle is being very sincere. I don’t feel like he’s great inflating for a lost friend. But even Chappelle points. To the unusual, you know, kind of ambiguous genre of what we’ve just witnessed, witnessed. I mean, you know, and what Letterman comes back to is like I mean, I know it sounds silly, but he’s just sort of saying, well, he’s not standing up and he’s not talking to a live audience. And and I think what Letterman is hinting at is that when you do standup, there’s like this electric filament between you and the audience like you are, you know, and and standup works or it doesn’t work. It’s like such a binary.

Speaker 2: And, you know, in the moment, right. Unlike doing any almost any other form of art or entertainment or even live performance, it is. It is, you know, you know it’s why it’s why it’s why it’s like you either kill or bomb, right? That’s why that language is so violent, because it’s it’s an art form of total daring and extremes. And failure is immediate and totally humiliating. And so it’s walking that tight wire that gives standup so much of its vitality and energy in the moment.

Speaker 2: But the irony of the whole discussion is how undercutting it is of MacDonald as a comedian who responded that. I mean, it’s not that he didn’t respond to an audience, it’s that he’s also fucking with that electric filament and that he was famous for adoring jokes that produced cavernous silence as a response. He would tell them he wouldn’t drop. I mean, someone says, like, if you’re doing a set and you realize the thing’s not working, you let go in your head immediately do something that’s going to kill, right? And it’s like Donald didn’t do that when he was on SNL.

Speaker 2: They did a dress rehearsal and and and the live broadcast and the two are total corollaries of one another. If something doesn’t work in the dress rehearsal, it does not work in the in the live broadcast. And McDonald’s would do an A weekend update joke that would just fall totally flat. And and he was like, we’re keeping it. I mean, insisted I always found that Julia the most difficult thing about Norm MacDonald.

Speaker 2: I found him. I admired him, but I found him somewhat distanced. I felt like there was a distance I wanted to have close between me and him or the real him that would help me feel where this comedy was coming from. And he was all about troubling that expectation to the point of of destroying it. And what’s fascinating, too, is like way more than the phone, which could be a bit or an actual friend interrupting. Without giving anything away.

Speaker 2: He closes with, in some ways one of the most moving and strongest humanized sections of the whole thing. Is he talking about his mother? And there’s a deeply, deeply sincere oration about his mother and what his mother meant to him that then has this incredible is like saying in the roundtable, it’s like he goes all the way around the barn, like he just does an amazing bring back and you just have no idea what part of what you’ve just heard is true. He made up a wife named Ruth so he could do, you know, husband bits, and you would never know that he didn’t have a wife named Ruth. I just found that so destabilizing.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and you have to think.

Speaker 5: Like there’s a part of you that feels like you’re watching something so tender and drafty. And honestly, the most emotionally fraught moment is those first few moments of the Comics Roundtable where they start to be kind of gingerly nice. And then Letterman just comes in and it’s like, Well, it doesn’t work. Basically, I mean, that’s a paraphrase, but it’s the strong vibe. And he also sort of it just reminds you why Letterman is the legend. The Letterman is. You know, he sort of cuts through in his own caustic way, but it does kind of free the rest of them to have a more direct conversation. But that’s the duality of him. You can’t you can’t tell whether he would be happy for everyone to be left with this mysterious object, that sort of almost funny and almost not.

Speaker 5: I mean, there’s there’s a there’s also some I mean, it’s interesting to have Chappelle weighing in on it. There’s some jokes about the culture around trans people in which he is ostensibly defending the the current progressive view and sort of sending up his dad, who may or may not be his real dad, of course, for for having more retrograde views in the past. But it’s a joke that lands. It could land either way, right? It could land. It could land as as as progressive or regressive, I think.

Speaker 5: So there’s just all these open question marks in the set, and it’s hard to tell whether the confusing ness of it as an object would be exactly what would make Norm MacDonald gleefully cackle at the trick he’d pulled on the audience, or whether he was so precise and calculated a creator of humorous ambiguities that he would have been not so excited to see this sort of half formed version of it in the world. And that’s that’s like the real mystery of the object.

Speaker 5: I’ll also say my husband is a big fan of Norm Macdonald comedy, and after he died, my husband delivered a number of jokes of Norm Macdonald to my children who sometimes now try to deliver them. And that’s through several layers of, you know, less calculated comedic experience.

Speaker 3: Shall we say, than Norm Macdonald had and delivering these, like.

Speaker 5: Shaggy dog jokes. So thank you. Thank you to my husband for teaching my children very long jokes. But but one of them did successfully deliver one, too, to my mom this weekend. And and it was a delight.

Speaker 3: But my husband did.

Speaker 5: Not do turn this into the my children respond to culture podcast. But we also I think I think, you know, there’s the moment in your childhood where you realize that your parents are fallible. I think that happened for us like a year ago after Norm Macdonald died and my husband told a joke after after having hit after hit telling like five long Norm Macdonald jokes in a row and showing a bunch of videos, some of which appropriately previewed for for adult content, some of which not.

Speaker 3: And then my husband.

Speaker 5: Told one, the punchline of which is that somehow a bar patron ends up eating the bar’s pet turtle turtle thinking that it’s like a beef sandwich on a hard.

Speaker 2: Roll.

Speaker 3: And so we’re so appalled. I got to the punchline and I didn’t see it coming and I was cracking up about this poor dead turtle. And her children were just like you monster. Anyway, that’s my that’s.

Speaker 5: Like. Well, I always have a soft spot for Norm Macdonald who ruined me and my children says.

Speaker 2: Uh, great, that. All right, well, Norm Macdonald nothing special is on Netflix. I think we all ended up feeling that it was quite worthwhile. So check it out. See what you think. All right, moving on. Harry Styles, he of One Direction and subsequent solo mega stardom has a new record. Harry’s House Out Carl Wilson. This late music critic says Styles is a gifted songwriter, an even stronger emotional communicator with an incredible fashion, sense, stage, charisma to burn and deep musical taste. His new record, Wilson says, is a welcome advance on his previous two solo outings.

Speaker 2: Carl, welcome back to the show. So happy to be here. Yeah, it’s fabulous to have you back. Will you kick us off by picking a cut to listen to from Harry’s house? Yeah. Let’s just start off with the first track of the album, which is called Music for a Sushi Restaurant. And I think immediately kind of establishes a bit of a different sound for anybody who’s been following Harry’s solo career so far.

Speaker 6: I don’t get lost on.

Speaker 2: Won’t you? Oh.

Speaker 6: Cause I love you, babe. In every kind of way. Just a little gesture.

Speaker 2: Maybe give us a just a quick backgrounder on styles and why this is an unsurprising surprise this record. Yeah, basic facts. And Harry was born in 1994 and is from Cheshire in the north west of England. And in 2010, when he was about 16 and was discovered via the X Factor programme in England and was among many unsuccessful competitors in that year’s X Factor was put together by Simon Cowell with four other guys. And that was where One Direction came from. So very classic kind of boyband assembled by a producer formula.

Speaker 2: But in a lot of ways, one direction wasn’t a typical boyband. It didn’t have the kind of sound that we kind of associate boy bands with from, you know, the days of N Sync and Backstreet Boys. It had kind of more varied sound and wasn’t kind of all about coordinated dance steps and harmonies. And several of the members gradually emerged as songwriters as well. But they were really the kind of toast of Tumblr in the first half, particularly of of the teens. And then they gradually cracked up in the mid-twenties and ceased activity into that 16.

Speaker 2: And Harry put out his first self-titled solo album in 2017, and then an album called Fine Line in 2019, which gave birth to the big hit Watermelon Sugar. And this is his follow up to that. I would say that the arc of those albums was really, you know, in a very understandable way.

Speaker 2: The 2017 album was kind of a bid to establish credibility and kind of trying to make rock star moves and and copying moves from sort of seventies singer songwriters to kind of try and establish himself as a distinctive voice and then finally being backed away from some of the retro ness of that and from the some of the some of the kind of uglier attempts to be a Rolling Stones style, masculine, macho rock rock star that mirrored the first album, but was kind of reaching for likeability in kind of marrying that first album style with it with a more contemporary pop style.

Speaker 2: And this album, I’d say, is really what he’s. Settling into a really confident style that seems much more his own. And and for the first time, I think really feels like he’s embarking on this solo career, which I think, you know, it takes a long time for people to break out of that boy band box.

Speaker 2: And in some ways, in relaxing into it, he’s able to recapture some of the things that made him so appealing in one direction, but also along the way, you know, and so as I said in that quote that you read off the top, Steve, it’s his incredible fashion plate. He was the first male solo subject of a Vogue cover shoot in 2020.

Speaker 2: He has stage costumes are incredible and he has this really amazing kind of gender fluid, relaxed, goofy presentation, charismatic, but also not playing entirely into a kind of 2022 stereotype of celebrity. He doesn’t lay his personal life out to be consumed as tabloid fodder, and he doesn’t really lay out personal life clues in his music the way that there’s a lot of expectation of of celebrities now.

Speaker 2: And, you know, some critics have criticized him for that, saying that he remains too much of a cipher in his music. But I actually find it refreshing. I, I enjoy the fact that we get to listen to the music as music and enjoy his personality as a personality and not really try and treat these things as, as gossip sheets. And and that that’s just the beginning of the things that I find appealing about this album. Yeah, let me just say quickly that my daughter’s crush on Harry Styles came to an abrupt end when, after showing me YouTube video, after a YouTube video of him and him talking and on interviews and stuff, I said, What a delightful young man. And that.

Speaker 3: You know.

Speaker 2: That is that just killed it. Well, luckily, that hasn’t parental approval hasn’t destroyed his career. This album is is his first really big number one album and and that the lead single as it was from this has been in and out of the number one spot on billboard and for the past couple of weeks has been back in it and looks to be kind of one of the songs at the center. There’s. It’s just nuts.

Speaker 6: Stuff. You know, it’s not the same as in the world.

Speaker 4: Carl Speaking of Songs of the Summer, that was the first thing I thought upon putting on this album, was that it’s a good thing that Summer Street is coming up pretty soon because this is very much summer vibes. And I remember I’m not sure if it was a song of the summer type of song or when it came out during the year. But I remember Watermelon Sugar being very associated with, you know, summer cookouts and things like that, even throughout the pandemic. In fact, to the extent that it got on my daughter’s nerves, Steve, she had the opposite of a crush on Harry Styles, and if she knew we were talking about him, eyes would be rolling everywhere, because I think she thinks of him as a real poser. And she thought the song Watermelon Sugar was really overplayed and boring. But I thought it was kind of catchy and summery.

Speaker 3: King of.

Speaker 2: Long. I don’t know.

Speaker 6: But you never go. Well, a moon shooter.

Speaker 4: And that’s exactly how this album hit me, too. I think my favorite song on it, and this actually may have to do with my own gossip knowledge about Harry Styles, which I can’t seem to avoid, even though I don’t necessarily try to follow gossip about his career, which is that he’s been dating Olivia Wilde, the, you know, director, actress, you know, emerging. I feel like she’s kind of an emerging filmmaker. And the song that he arguably seems to have written for her on this album is my favorite song on the album. Maybe that’s because I’m an Olivia Wilde fan and a movie critic, but it’s called Cinema, and I wanted to hear the chorus of that if we could, because to me, I can tell it’s going to be one of my songs of the summer already.

Speaker 3: Just think you.

Speaker 2: I think.

Speaker 3: Does this.

Speaker 2: I just can’t. Cinema say is one of the most divisive tracks on this album. I like it too, but I think that some people find and this comes up and it came up a little bit with watermelon sugar, and similarly with many of Harry’s food sex based metaphors. Occasionally people find it a little gross, I think when he when he’s a little to lover man in his lyrics, you know, like the cinema is a song that I could kind of imagine Maxwell having come out with at some point in his career. And it doesn’t bother me at all, but some but some people do. Speaking of the food sex thing, some people keep thinking that it’s called cinnamon. But, yeah, that that that’s the most overt nod to the Olivia Wilde story. You know, the song says that she’s cinnamon, he’s pop, and she pops when they get intimate is that’s the line that I think bothers people sometimes.

Speaker 4: But Cinnamon an intimate that’s such a good rhyme. You know, that’s that was one of my favorite lyrical moments on the album, actually. And usually I don’t like rhymes that are off rhymes, but that is a very clever one.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think that actually, you know, if you want to read into this album, you can see a kind of not all the time, but in lots of songs, a surfacing theme of some kind of long distance relationship and the idea of a kind of binary between L.A. and London, which are the two places that Harry spent lockdowns. And the album was made in lockdown with his two close collaborators, Tyler Johnson, and a producer who calls himself Kid Harpoon. And so it comes out of this kind of hothouse atmosphere. And in some ways, you know, this album’s called Harry’s House, and it does represent a little bit more of a domestic and intimate kind of tone compared to the first two albums. Although, as I was saying, not intimate enough for some people’s tastes.

Speaker 3: I’m struck by the fact that they are the two.

Speaker 5: Parents of teenagers on this podcast. Both of their teenagers are too cool for Harry Styles. Like and I feel interested, like an alien anthropologist that Harry Styles is the sex symbol of our day and like he really is like everyone except for Diana and Steve, schoolchildren seems to have a crush on them, like multigenerational. But I do wonder if, as he gets bigger, there’s a way in which he’s. Becoming a Hottie for old people or something? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe there’s just a multi multi-generational crush on him. Like, I, i, he it’s not doesn’t stir me in that way, but I’m like, how nice for the culture that he’s the Hottie like love to have a fashion forward, you know, gender ambiguous, modern Hottie great work culture like that, sort of my feeling rather than like get me Harry Styles in my veins, you know?

Speaker 2: Can I just quickly interject here and say that our production assistant texted the group chat saying I can certainly write 2000 words on why I love Harry Styles of that whole show.

Speaker 3: On.

Speaker 4: My desk by tomorrow at 9 a.m. Nadira.

Speaker 2: I think that as an icon, he, you know, partly definitely it is grown up one directioners who are sustaining him and I think it is also older people. You know, I think that he stands somewhere in a line between Lil Nas X who also sort of in a gender blind breaking and and kind of sexually flamboyant way, has made a mark on the culture that’s very appealing in the past few years.

Speaker 2: And then on the other hand, you know, he also has some of the kind of milquetoast genius of Bruno Mars in a lot of ways. And you could you could make a call about where he falls that way, you know, but I have to admit that, like, one of the ways that I was courted and charmed by Harry Styles was in his kind of inter-generational gestures, which the thing that made me fall in love with Harry was in 2017 when on a couple of different occasions he duetted with Stevie Nicks on a version of Landslide. There’s this amazing YouTube video from a performance of the two of them at the Troubadour in L.A. in 2017, where they sing Landslide together really beautifully, and they clearly have a nice connection.

Speaker 6: Okay. There. Now. I know that. To.

Speaker 2: And then towards the end of it, Harry just burst into tears on the phone, of course, because he’s going to be up there with Stevie Nicks and and that kind of won my heart immediately. And he has kept up this pattern of dueting with older women this year at Coachella, where, by the way, he was wearing this incredible fur coat and this like Liza minnelli, like sparkling pantsuit. He brought out Shania Twain and they saying, man, I feel like a woman together.

Speaker 6: And there’s. We had one. Right.

Speaker 3: Okay. But this is just confirming he’s like your mom’s favorite hottie.

Speaker 5: And, like, the only way to maximize your mom’s favorite hottie, like, brand or energy is he’s, like, dueting with all your.

Speaker 3: Mom’s favorite musicians. It’s. It’s it’s it’s so unusual. It’s great.

Speaker 2: Okay, well, I’m here to report that our production assistant is already halfway through her 2000 word assignment on the group chat. Carl, it is. It’s always a joy to have you on the show. This one was right in your wheelhouse. You didn’t miss it. Thanks for. Thanks for coming on. The pleasure was all mine. All right. Now is the moment on our podcast when we endorse Dana. What what do you got this week.

Speaker 4: Steve? The day that we’re recording this June 7th is Prince’s birthday. He would have been 64 years old if he was still alive. And my endorsement has to do with with our beloved, dearly departed prince. And it is that I just discovered because of his birthday and people tweeting about his birthday, that his concert film Sign of the Times from 1987 is finally, finally widely available streaming. Maybe that’s been true for a while, but if so, it’s only been a short while. I remember that after he died in 2016, all of these people were posting about how a sign of the times is one of the greatest concert movies ever, and that it had criminally not been on home video since, I think 1991. The movies from 87, because it wasn’t a hit in theaters and for some reason it was just never sort of picked up, even though when for the brief period it was on VHS, I think it was a huge bestseller and very, very popular and beloved.

Speaker 4: And after he died, there were all these things about, Oh, here’s a you can get a Russian bootleg of sign of the times and you can torrent sign of the times. And it was like this difficult gem that was impossible to access. Then I think for a while it was on Showtime, but then of course you have to subscribe to Showtime to see it. But finally now, as of this spring, I think I don’t know what’s happened legally or whatever, but Sign of the Times concert film is everywhere. You can stream it on Amazon, it’s on the Criterion Channel right now. I think it’s on Peacock TV as well. If you go out there and look, it is not at all hard to find a perfectly affordable streaming version of Sign of the Times. So I am I am here endorsing something that I’ve never seen, but I guarantee it will be wonderful. I can’t imagine that the Prince concert film that everyone thinks is one of the greatest concert films of all time is going to be a disappointment. So I’m looking to stream it in the near future, and I’m hoping people will go out and find it as well.

Speaker 2: That is so good.

Speaker 2: Created endorsement. Julia, what do you have?

Speaker 3: I want to endorse two things. This is going to be a little bit like endorsing Chinatown or.

Speaker 5: What are some of the other like head smacking lead, dumbly, obvious things I’ve endorsed over my years of famously good cultural experience is good, reports Turner. But I finally went to the Hollywood Bowl, the legendary outdoor music venue in Los Angeles a few weeks ago. And it is as glorious as as everyone here believes it to be. It’s a treasure of the city. It’s a just a beautiful place to enjoy the fact that being outdoors in the evening in L.A. is one of life’s great pleasures.

Speaker 5: And in honor of the 100th anniversary of the bowl celebrations that are underway this summer, my team has put together a gigantic special issue slash guide to the history of the Hollywood Bowl, delightful things that have happened, their acts and tricks for attending. And so if you’ve if you are a fan and you love it, or if you are a neophyte and don’t yet know anything about it, I would point you to this wonderful package of Hollywood Bowl iron, including a fantastic lead essay from our marvelous classical music critic Mark Swed, who delightfully unspools a bunch of incredible yarns about the odd, odd history of the place. So the Hollywood Bowl and the L.A. Times package about its history are my endorsements this week.

Speaker 2: Well, it sounds that sounds really cool. All right. My endorsement this week is there is obviously a lot going on in this country. That’s I mean, dismaying is to insult all of our intelligences. It’s just heartbreaking and terrifying. And I think we’re all looking for a way to try to understand what’s happening to us collectively. And I understand, Dan, that many of its most important aspects are continues with a history that the most vulnerable people in this country have been aware of all along.

Speaker 2: Right. The idea that it’s a sea change and we needed to treat it as a sea change is a very specific point of view. And I just want to flag that. I don’t subscribe to that. However, I do think that there is a large let me put it let me put it a different way. Actually. I think large and horrifying trends in art that go back to our founding and beyond are uniting and rising simultaneously to the surface as a now.

Speaker 2: Frighteningly single phenomenon, whatever you want to call it, and something that’s really helped me think about it is a memoir that was written by a German man in the 1930s, in 1939, having witnessed the thirties and seeing obviously I mean, obviously, this sort of takes you through the teens in the twenties, the rise of Hitler in the thirties, right up to roughly. I haven’t finished it, but I’m assuming like roughly the invasion of Poland and the start of the war. But it wasn’t published until 2000. It was the man who wrote his name, Sebastian Haffner. And the book is called Defying Hitler A Memoir, and it was published posthumously by his son, who’s a literary figure in Germany as well. Actually, quite a bit of acclaim and commercial success. And I see why. I mean, it’s it’s both an extraordinary memoir. It’s filled with I mean, I wouldn’t go so far as to say Proustian Reverie, right? I mean, it’s not that kind of a memoir.

Speaker 2: Exactly. But it’s a very frank look at his own childhood and his own response as a pretty small boy to the two World War One and how it was a kind of sporting event in their lives. And then there was this dislocating fact where everything they’d been told about the course of the war turned out to be suddenly revealed as untrue in their defeat and what it was like to live through the humiliations of the Treaty of Versailles, and on and on and on and on.

Speaker 2: These things are somewhat familiar. It’s not at all itself familiar. It really gets into the deep source of mass appeal for a single, charismatic and satanic figure and how a society might do that. And I just think it’s beautifully written and really deeply considered, and I couldn’t recommend it. More Defying Hitler A Memoir by Sebastian Haffner. Oh. Julia, thank you so much.

Speaker 3: Thank you.

Speaker 2: Dana, thanks a lot. Another fun one.

Speaker 4: Was a good one, Steve.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. All right. You’ll find links to some of the things we talked about today, our show page that slate.com slash Culturefest. You can email us at Culturefest at Slate.com. The introductory music to the show is by composer Nicholas Patel. A production assistant is Nadira Goffe are producers. Cameron Drew is for Dana Stevens, Julia Turner, Carl Wilson and Stephen Metcalf. Thank you so much for joining us and we will see you next week and.

Speaker 3: Hello and welcome to this blues.

Speaker 5: Segment this week, Culture Gap. Today we take a listener question.

Speaker 3: If it were up to you.

Speaker 5: How many TV shows and movies would you watch? How many books would you read? What would your ideal cultural mix be and what would the piece be? So basically, I think the question is where are we not paid in some fashion to consume culture? How would we consume culture?

Speaker 3: Let’s start with.

Speaker 5: Tina, who has to watch many, many movies in a row and who we can reveal to you special paying plus members. Wanted to do David Cronenberg. And I was like, I can’t watch that so soon after men. We have to watch Chippendales.

Speaker 3: So if you.

Speaker 5: Heard some veiled resentment in that segment, that was because instead of dying and getting to talk about something she’d already seen, I forced her to watch the kids television.

Speaker 3: Kids film on Disney plus. Anyway, Dana Freed.

Speaker 5: From the strictures of your role as a professional film critic, what would your cultural consumption be? Just dilute strings and harpsichords in the corner?

Speaker 4: Well, since music didn’t come up, I mean, I think my actually my musical consumption, honestly, would be pretty much exactly the same, I guess once in a while. Like this week, we do an album for the show, so I listen to an album I might not have listened to otherwise, but, you know, some are stressed. Oh my God. Actually, if the show didn’t exist, I would probably never listen to Pop because I wouldn’t have Summer Street in my life to bring me new pop music. But as far as the the genres mentioned by the letter writer TV movies and what was the other one? TV, movies and books. I was trying to think about this. I mean, it’s so hard to conceptualize your life other than outside of your job, right? I mean, if you’re somebody who is invested in what you do for your profession, I mean, who knows? I might in a crazy way, I might watch more movies if I didn’t have to write on the movies.

Speaker 4: Right. And I certainly before I was a movie critic, but was just a cinephile, probably watched as many or more movies than I do now, because the only responsibility you had when watching a movie was to sit there for a couple hours and enjoy a movie, maybe talk about it later with friends. Now that movies seem connected with, Oh Well, am I going to podcast on it? Do I need a notebook? You know, am I going to review it? I think that as movie critics go, I see relatively few. I know that when the end of the year comes around and people are talking about their top tens, I often feel like I’m cramming more than some of my colleagues who maybe because they don’t have kids or I’m not exactly sure why, because they don’t have a weekly podcast with TV and music and other things. They can cram more movies into their week.

Speaker 4: But honestly, I think. I might abide by the rule of twos. I’m not saying I would never exceed this, but I think I would be happy seeing two movies a week minimum. I might do more, but two movies seems like about the average watching two TV shows on a regular basis, one with my family. And then you have to have your secret show, not secret that in that you don’t tell anyone about it. But you know, your solo show that you want to binge on late at night when your family’s asleep. I always have one like that going, so I would have at least two TV shows. The public in the private and and I think, well, this is already true of the way I read books. I always like to have at least two books going at a time. Not at least just about.

Speaker 4: Exactly. That’s the cap. Because then you have and we’ve talked about this before and we talk about reading habits, then you have your bedside big, chunky, somewhat, you know, dense book that might put you to sleep in a good way when you read it at night. But you don’t have to carry it around because it’s heavy. And then you have your lighter book. So often I’ll have like a big nonfiction junker on my bedside table and then carry around a paperback novel or a paperback non-fiction book that’s a little bit lighter in nature. So I think that’s me. The Rule of Twos six six things altogether per week.

Speaker 5: Fascinating.

Speaker 5: Okay, Steve, what’s your what’s your take?

Speaker 2: Well, let me start here, which is that one of the things that I’m grateful for about doing this show is that I consume so much culture that I would in pop culture that I wouldn’t consume otherwise. And while any individual item might be disposable or annoying, you’re, you know, every movie or every piece of culture basically is a is a set of stories embedded within a set of stories embedded within a set of stories as just today like the Harry Styles like have an Carl Wilson. Explain to us what this album means and with respect to the other ones that he’s made and his origins in one direction and what kind of person, whatever that’s like, those narratives, those I find those narratives very compelling, right in the career of an actor.

Speaker 2: What is this kind of role? I mean, what in the life of a studio, right? What does it mean for them to take a turn in this direction or this genre or on and on and on and on and on, right? So I like being forced to watch things that I really wouldn’t otherwise watch in volume. And but I guess what I would say is I, I am such a creature of like moods and phases that it would be hard to generalize because I go through a period where I famine and then another where I feast and it’s like, you know, dry season and monsoon and almost nothing in between.

Speaker 2: And so I completely, completely rid my diet of, you know, old Hollywood movies, but only, you know, like just, you know, my daughter and I watch pop star the other night, like, we might just, you know, fly through, like, you know, Spinal Tap government, like every kind of satirical, mockumentary style or whatever.

Speaker 2: But I guess at the end of the day, what I wish most was that I read more novels, I read ceaselessly, and I tend to read non-fiction, and it tends to blend in a way that doesn’t always make me happy work and pleasure, in that I almost always pick up something that I think will be apposite to larger projects that I’m working on. And when I finally pick up Rachel COSCARELLI Smith or, you know, whomever it is, I find it so incredibly satisfying to do it.

Speaker 1: And I guess I.

Speaker 2: Kind of wish that there were like parallel universes, one in which I was able to just delve endlessly into written material and trap pop culture altogether. And there’s another in which I maintain this exact arrangement that we have via this podcast.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I relate to that too. I mean, I will say, Steve, we give Dana.

Speaker 5: A lot of guff for her, like zither fandom or.

Speaker 3: Whatever. But I don’t I don’t think we spend.

Speaker 5: Enough time mocking you for, like, constantly dropping in with, like. Well, I was just browsing this philosophical treat. Is there like, just kicks? I was like, thinking about what it was like in pre-war Germany and like, like you’re constantly, constantly being like, I’m like, oh, I enjoyed, like, this kid’s game and is like, I liked this film or the thing I saw on the internet, and you’re like, I was in the archives.

Speaker 3: You’re, you’re.

Speaker 2: You’re you make me sound all. But yes.

Speaker 3: Now I’m like, I’m envious. Like, I, I.

Speaker 5: Find that my days are so. I mean, everyone’s days are exhausting. I don’t mean to suggest mine are particularly exhausting, but like between three kids and management job and just like the zoom stream of meetings all day long, like, I would love to have a month to just think in-depth about some interesting historical phenomenon, you know, and, and I find that in my recreational culture time, I like stuff that’s lighter. Like, I just find it and I need actually like the soufflé a bit in my cultural watching. And I enjoy having this show because it pushes me towards things that I wouldn’t consume otherwise.

Speaker 5: I mean, I think my natural habit would be books and television, more so than film. For whatever reason, I find the like, ongoing narratives of TV and the ongoing webs of relationships that TV shows can create to be more engaging, more fun than film. Which, I mean, I think it’s like I prefer novels to short stories. Like film seems like a slightly beautiful and abstract exercise in a different way. So I like having had to keep up with film for the last 15 odd years, doing the show with you guys.

Speaker 5: And I don’t know, I love your distinction of the private show versus the communal show. Dana That’s so true. I totally have private shows. I don’t really thought about it that way or what the difference is between your private show and your public show and that. But I think the private show, in a way, is like the one that keeps you personal company or you just don’t you don’t want to think about what anybody else is thinking of it while you’re watching it, you know.

Speaker 5: So I think my current. I enjoy being pushed toward culture for all the reasons that Steve describes. Like, there’s always something interesting to glean, even when it’s not a cultural product. You would have picked your own on your own. I think in a world where I still had a busy job but didn’t have this podcast, it would be more books and more TV, and that’s film. I think in a world where I did not have as busy a job, I would love to read more non-fiction. I love it. It’s some of my favorite reading, and sometimes it can be written with the kind of gripping, propulsive ness that makes it possible for it to be my bedtime reading.

Speaker 5: But I love to you know, I just picked up John McPhee’s oranges a little while ago because I am living out here in California surrounded by fruit trees. Just made a salad the other night with plums from my garden just. Just to hold it lorded over you. It’s coasters and cherry. Delicious. Uh, just becoming an insufferable Californian is my new brand.

Speaker 5: Um, but, you know, I’d. I’d. Like John McPhee is wonderful. He’s one of my favorite writers. The manner in which John McPhee is writing about citrus is not going to be consumed by me in ten minute increments before bed each night like I need to. I need a long afternoon in a hammock to just read it in one gulp, and I will find that someday. But not right now. Not soon. So I’ll come back to you when I’ve learned all about citrus. I mean, I suppose we all have not mentioned the art forms. We don’t consume as much, right? Like in a world with unlimited time, I’d like to go to museums more and stare at more visual art, which is always satisfying. And I love Dana’s family term of the ice grab. When you go to a museum for an hour and it resets your brain because you’ve had an ice grab.

Speaker 5: I also like games, video games. We’ve not discussed video games as as culture consuming experiences here, but those would be things we could or could or could not be pushed towards further. But it’s a super interesting question. James Callaghan, long time listener, thank you so much for asking it. And thank you, Sleep Plus listeners for supporting our show. We’ll see you next week.