Culture Gabfest - The Timothée Chalamet vs. the Blue Aliens Edition
Slate Culture Feed
Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2026
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Julia and Steve welcome guest host Sam Adams to deconstruct the aggravating, yet strangely charming, table tennis phenom on the make that is Marty Supreme. Played with “BDE off-the-charts” (Steve’s words) by Timothée Chalamet, the unceasingly shameless hustler may just be an avatar for our age.
Speaking of avatars, we can’t avoid discussing Avatar: Fire and Ash, the latest installment of James Cameron’s immersive mega-franchise. Once again, the big blue folks peopling Pandora drew boku bucks at the box office… but do the Avatar films have any “cultural impact”? And what does “cultural impact” even mean? New Yorker staff writer Michael Schulman steps into the cultural cage match to debate this long-simmering internet argument.
On this week’s bonus episode for Slate Plus subscribers, the hosts take up a listener question about “cultural bran muffins,” the bits of culture you know would be good for you if only you could get them down. The hosts confess their bran secrets.
Endorsements
Steve: The essay "Two Pins and a Lollipop" about Judy Garland by Bee Wilson in the London Review of Books.
Sam: The album Penthouse by the band Luna, particularly the song "Chinatown."
Julia: Slate's beloved annual tradition Movie Club which for its 2025 edition gathers film critics Bilge Ebiri, Alison Wilmore, Justin Chang, and our very own Dana Stevens for a rollicking exchange about the year in film.
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Email us your thoughts at culturefest@slate.com.
Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch. Production assistance by Daniel Hirsch.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Julia Turner, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest, the Timetei-Shalame versus the Blue |
| 0:16.3 | Aliens edition. It's Wednesday, January 7, 2006, and today on the show, we're talking about Marty Supreme, the new Josh Safty film starring Timotee Shalame as a ping pong champion on the make. |
| 0:29.8 | As perhaps you have heard by now, the film is one of A24's biggest swings yet, and we'll get into Chalemay's ruthlessly hustling hero and what the film makes of both his ambition and his recklessness. |
| 0:41.8 | Then we will swoop on over on our flying dragon thing magiigs to Pandora to examine Avatar, Fire and Ash, the latest installment in James Cameron's gargantuan franchise, which gives our heroes Jake Sully and |
| 0:55.5 | Nateri, remember them? Maybe, maybe not, a hissing new nemesis. And then finally, we'll stick |
| 1:02.8 | with Avatar for a minute and talk about the persistent online debate about whether it actually |
| 1:07.7 | has a significant cultural impact, which is a surprisingly contested question, |
| 1:12.9 | considering what a commercial success it has been and continues to be with this new film. |
| 1:19.3 | Steve McHaff is here. |
| 1:20.2 | Hello, Steve. |
| 1:21.5 | Hey, Julia. |
| 1:22.3 | Happy New Year. |
| 1:23.3 | Happy New Year to you, too. |
| 1:25.1 | And sitting in for Dana Stevens, we've got Sam Adams. |
| 1:28.0 | Hello, may AWA be with you. |
| 1:30.9 | Always. |
| 1:31.8 | You know, we're taping here on the fifth anniversary of January 6th. |
| 1:35.0 | Nicholas Maduro has been captured, you know, just a bright start to 2026. |
| 1:41.2 | Let's go off planet as quickly as we can. |
| 1:45.0 | Indeed, time to hook our braids into the matrix, whatever. |
| 1:50.0 | Um, all right. |
| 1:52.0 | Let's dive in. |
... |
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