Culture Gabfest Is Hamnet this Year’s Oscar Villain? Edition
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Jan 28, 2026 Clare Malone, New Yorker writer known for sharp cultural and media reporting, joins to discuss her profile of Bari Weiss and reporting-based context about Weiss’s leadership at CBS News. They explore Weiss’s managerial style, clashes with legacy TV norms, and how billionaire ownership and corporate pressures shape newsroom decisions. Short takes on Hamnet and The Rip round out the conversation.
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Filling Biography's Gaps With Domestic Absence
- Maggie O'Farrell's novel Hamnet ingeniously turns gaps in Shakespeare's biography into the felt absences of a household.
- That conceit lets the story de-center Shakespeare and focus on domestic grief and loss.
Film Recenters Shakespeare Against The Book
- Dana Stevens argues the film shifts focus back onto Shakespeare, undoing the book's decentralizing gambit.
- The movie's casting and writing give Shakespeare visible prominence and familiar Shakespearean lines.
Portraying Shakespeare Invites Inevitable Deflation
- Stephen Metcalf says depicting Shakespeare risks inevitable deflation because his consciousness is a mystery.
- Any attempt to portray him directly struggles to match the complexity of his work and mind.
