The following podcast contains explicit language.

I'm Julia Turner, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest, Baby Yonse Edition.

It's Wednesday, August 31, 2011, and on today's program, we're going to talk about Hurricane Irene and natural disasters in the social media

era, four-hour guru Timothy Ferris, and the big news from Beyonce and Jay-Z, they are expecting

a small and very talented child. Joining me today is Slate's movie critic, Dana Stevens. Hi, Dana.

Hey, Julia. And remote from Columbia County, where his basement is finally dry, Steve McCaff.

Julia, great to be here.

You are a critic at large. I forgot to say what you are. You're a critic at large with the dry basement.

Yes, critic very at large, still at large. Exactly. I'm glad to have you on the show.

As our listeners will have gleaned, I'm taking on the hosting duties today, but Steve will

be on hand to write the ship when I lead us astray.

So we wanted to start with the big news or non-news, depending on where you were this weekend.

Hurricane Irene, it was much expected, assiduously prepared for in all up and down

the eastern seaboard. There were evacuations in New York City and a number of other counties.

It wreaked horrifying damage in a number of places and was pronounced by the Twitterati of New York

City to be a dud because it only rained on them. Steve, how did Irene hit you guys?

Well, we were, thank you for asking. We were actually pretty, we were pretty lucky all

things considered. We didn't lose power. We didn't have any big trees come down. But we were

very, very close to people who did get hit, and for whom the hurricane, in fact, did live up

fully to its hype.

And those are the people slightly west of the Hudson River were east of the Hudson River.

And they got absolutely hammered.

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