Category: Pop Culture

How Country Music Turned the Ford F-150 Into a Luxury Ride

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Image credit: Texas Monthly | Courtesy of Ford

Once upon a time, pickup trucks were strictly utility vehicles, used primarily for picking up and hauling stuff. Not so anymore, says Rose McMackin, a Texas writer whose work focuses on the American West. Nowadays, she says, pickup trucks are “aspirational,” used to project how the drivers want to be seen. So how on earth did that happen? According to McMackin, it’s a change that’s been largely fueled by country music. Read all about it (and listen to it) in an article she wrote for Texas Monthly  in August 2025. 

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Did Usher Write His Own Commencement Speech? (Yeah!)

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Image credit: Emory University

Have you ever had to make a presentation or give a speech that meant a lot to you, one in which you hoped to hit just the right note, make just the right connections, leave just the right impression? If so, you probably worked hard on it, revising over and over, getting advice, tweaking it right up to the last moment. Pretty much like Usher did for his 2025 commencement address at Emory University, though he had a publicist and team of professional advisers while you probably relied on friends or family members. In this New York Times article from May 2025, national correspondent Alan Blinder takes a close-up look at Usher’s speech composing process, trying to capture the recursive dynamic that drove Usher from start to finish. Here’s your chance to experience some of that process—and perhaps compare it to your own. 

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Wicked Review—Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande Make the Magic Happen

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Image credit: Universal Pictures/AP

Spectacular! Visually stunning! Way too long! Good, but not great! Exhausting! This is just some of what’s been said about Wicked. Have you seen it? If so, what did you think of it? If you loved it, what did you love about it? If not, why not? Or maybe you liked some of it but not all of it. See what Wendy Ide, the chief film critic of the Observer, says in a review published in The Guardian on November 24, 2024.

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How Bluey Became the Best Kids’ Show of Our Time

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Image credit: Ludo Studios 2019

What was your favorite TV show when you were 5 or 6 years old? Did it essentially tell the same story over and over again? Just what was it about the show that kept you watching episode after episode? According to Kathryn VanArendonk, a critic who writes about TV, what makes Bluey the “best kids’ show of our time” is its refusal to take such a formulaic approach. Instead, Bluey’s unpredictability and quirky humor convince her that “these are real children,” ones she can learn grown-up lessons from. This review was first published in Vulture in 2021; this updated version was published on April 15, 2024, as Bluey’s popularity in the US reached a new peak.

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I Feel So Ugly without My Makeup On

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Image credit: Buse Koldas

Throughout history and in widely differing cultures around the world, people have used various kinds of makeup to mark or adorn themselves. Why? Answers to that question vary according to time and place, of course, but how about in our time and place: twenty-first century college campuses in the US? Enter Buse Koldas, a student from Istanbul who was in her first year at Johns Hopkins University, studying computer science and engineering, when she wrote about what makeup has meant to her for the Johns Hopkins News-Letter in 2024.

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Astro Bot Review: All History Lessons Should Be This Fun

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Image credit: Team Asobi

Think you’ve seen everything imaginable in video games? If so, you might want to read Harold Goldberg’s review of Sony’s Astro Bot. Goldberg speaks as an expert who has been playing, analyzing, and reviewing video games for over 15 years, most recently in this regular column for the New York Times that was launched in 2024. Let’s see if he intrigues you enough to give this game a try!

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LSU’s Angel Reese, Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, and the Double Standards of Race in Sports

LSU forward Angel Reese making the “you can’t see me” gesture in front of Iowa guard Caitlin Clark during an NCAA championship game in 2023.
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Image credit: MADDIE MEYER/GETTY IMAGES

A basketball player waves their own hand in front of their own face and gets called out for behavior that some reports and social media posts called “thuggish.” Wait. What? Did that really happen? Well, yes, it did. Here’s the context: an NCAA tournament championship game, two top teams, each with a top-notch star player. So far, nothing remarkable, right? Ah, but did we mention that it was a women’s game? And that the hand-waving player was a Black woman leading a mostly Black team from a school in the South, while the other star player was a White woman leading a mostly White team from the Midwest? Is it making sense yet? Award-winning sports journalist William Rhoden details the situation and adds his own argument in this April 2023 Andscape essay.

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Why Are All Action Heroes Named Jack, James, or John?

A collage of action heroes Capt. James T. Kirk, Johnny Utah, James Bond, John Wick, Jack Ryan, Jason Bourne, and John James Rambo.
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Image credit: Photo illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo/Slate. Photos by David Lee/Lionsgate, MGM, Amazon Prime Video, NBC, Universal, Twentieth Century Fox, and Yoni S. Hamenahem/Wikipedia.

“Bond. James Bond.” Such a recognizable movie quote even though it has no punchline, makes no clever point. Does it matter that his name is James and not, say, Clive (very English!) or Butch (very strong and also alliterative)? Such a silly question. But of course it matters; at least, his name follows a definite pattern of action hero names. Demetria Glace, data researcher and author, investigates a pattern she has observed in the names of action heroes in this March 2023 report in Slate.

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