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I'm Stephen Metcalf, and this is the Slate CultureGabfest, heavy traffic edition.

This is also the daily podcast from slate.com for Wednesday, June 17th, 2009.

On today's program, we're going to talk about tweeting the revolution in Iran, nostalgia for the rubble in New York City,

and a traffic-free Times Square is such a thing conceivable.

Joining me today are Slate's deputy editor Julia Turner.

Julia, hello.

Hi, Steve.

How you doing?

I'm good.

Good.

And our film critic, Dana Stevens.

Hello, Dana.

Hey, Dana, you haven't been with us for a couple weeks now.

I know. Well, just one. Just one. Oh, my God. Hearts are cracking up and down the Atlantic coast. I should say we're having a couple of quirks today. The first is we have adult-looking equipment now in the studio, and to celebrate it, we're going to leave it behind us and go on a field trip to Times Square for our final segment about traffic flowing through Times Square with our very

special guest, Tom Vanderbilt, who is now a columnist for Slate writing specifically what,

Julie, about sort of urban studies slash traffic. His column is called Transport and it's planes, trains,

automobiles. He's written a couple pieces for us, one about why trains are so much slower now than they were in the early 20th century, which is galling to everybody who's ever been stuck on an Amtrak train and other subjects, local and international.

And wonderful.

...