Slate Arts & Culture Spoken Edition

After a miserable day like Wednesday, we could all use a news story—just one!—that isn’t part of the torrent of garbage that’s been raining down for the last year. So here’s that story: Aardman Animations, the beloved studio behind Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep, has a new movie coming out. It’s called Early Man, it’s directed by Nick Park, and here’s its trailer.