Culture Gabfest - Endgame
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 11 November 2020
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode, Steve, Dana, and Julia talk with New York Times book critic Dwight Garner about his book Garner’s Quotations: A Modern Miscellany. Next, they are joined by Slate’s television critic Willa Paskin to discuss The Queen’s Gambit. Finally, the panel imagines how the Trump administration will be remembered in American Studies classes years from now.
In Slate Plus, the hosts talk with writer and enneagram counselor Jacob Rubin about their enneagrams.
Podcast production by Cameron Drews. Production assistance by Rachael Allen.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Stephen Maccalf, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest Endgame Edition. It's Wednesday, |
| 0:14.7 | November 11th, 2020. On today's show, The Queen's Gamut is a limited series. It's on Netflix right now. |
| 0:20.2 | It tells a story of an orphan who discovers she is a chess prodigy. And it follows the long and tortuous path she must follow to unlock her own greatness. It stars Anna Taylor Joy. It is a joy. We are joined by Willa Paskin. Also a joy to discuss it. And then we are so pleased to welcome Dwight Garner, the book reviewer and critic extraordinaire for the New York Times. onto the show for the first time to discuss it. And then we are so pleased to welcome Dwight Garner, the book reviewer and critic extraordinaire for the New York Times on to the show for the first time to discuss |
| 0:41.5 | Garner's quotations of modern miscellaneous, what is called a commonplace book of extraordinary |
| 0:46.7 | quotes from his capacious reading over the decades. It'll be fun to talk to Dwight, I guarantee it. |
| 0:51.2 | And finally, cast your mind far into the future, let's say |
| 0:55.8 | 70 years, now cast it back to now. What words will we possibly find to describe the previous four years? |
| 1:04.7 | How will historians or American Studies professors look back on the circus that has been the |
| 1:09.4 | Trump presidency? We will. That one around, |
| 1:13.1 | I'm joined by Julia Turner, who is the deputy managing editor of the LA Times. Julia, hey. |
| 1:18.6 | Hello, hello. And of course, Dana Stevens is the film critic for slate.com. Hey, Dana. |
| 1:23.8 | Hey, Steve. All right, well, the Queen's Gambit is based on a novel of the same name. |
| 1:29.8 | It's now a streaming show on Netflix. |
| 1:33.0 | It stars Anya Taylor Joy as Beth Harmon. |
| 1:36.0 | She's been orphaned by her mother's car accident at a very, very young age. |
| 1:39.3 | She's being raised by what appear to be dower-faced hypocrites in an orphanage, |
| 1:45.9 | where one day, almost completely by accident, she discovers the beguilements of a chessboard. And why not? It's a perfectly |
| 1:50.7 | symmetrical, well-ordered, rule-following universe in contrast with her own inner chaos and her loneliness. |
| 1:58.1 | So she takes the game, not only takes that she discovers that |
| 2:01.3 | she's really unusually, like prodigiously gifted at it. What follows is an epic and often |
| 2:06.7 | digressive journey toward greatness, possible greatness that involves an emotionally stunted |
| 2:12.0 | adoptive family, booze, pills, boys, but mostly, this show's about her own talent and her own inner |
... |
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