Hi, this is Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic, and I'm here with the Slate's Spoiler Special podcast on 2012, the new Roland Emmerich film about the end of the world.

So, joining me today are John Swansberg, Slate's Culture Editor. Hey, John.

Hey, good to be here.

And from D.C. we have Dan Coice. Hey, Dan.

Hey, how are you guys? And Dan is a contributor on film to The Washington Post, to Trucelant, and to the New York Magazine Culture Blog, Vulture.

So, Dan, thanks for joining us from D.C.

My pleasure.

All right.

So 2012, you guys.

Let's start from the beginning, which is the end of the world, and try to get through a plot summary of this immense sprawling epic of destruction.

So the title. Let's start with the title. John, why 2012?

Right. So my understanding is that the Mayans foresaw that the world would end in 2012.

Although I thought that this movie was going to be more about that Mayan, ancient Mayan

prediction. It really dispenses with it very quickly. Like, there's like one or two people say,

you know, the Mayans saw this coming and predicted that the world would end. But in fact,

the world doesn't end because of some like weird Mayan hex or, or it doesn't really have any

to do with the Mayans. There's nothing occult about it, right? I mean, the Mayans happen to have predicted it because their calendar ended in the year 2012.

And so conspiracy theorists have long assumed that that means it's the end of the world or something.

But except for a vague shot of a background ziggurat, there's no Mayan hocus pocus at all.

Right. It's purely a geological and maybe cosmological result. I mean,

the science is very baffling. Maybe we should try to describe it. I don't really pretend to understand

it at all. I had assumed that this movie would begin with shots of half-clad ancient Mayans

...