The Slate Political Gab Fest is sponsored by GoToMeeting with HD faces. Now your team can meet face-to-face while online from anywhere, even from an iPad.

Try GoToMeeting free for 30 days. Visit go-tomeeting.com and use the promo code GabFest.

And by Audible.com, a leading provider of spoken audio information and entertainment.

Listen to audiobooks whenever and wherever you want.

Get a free book when you sign up for a 30-day free trial at Audiblepodcast.com slash

gabfest.

Hello and welcome to the Slate Political GabFest August 24th, 2012, the legitimate, I mean the forcible Gab Fest edition.

I'm David Plotz, the editor of Slate, back from two weeks in Spain where I learned that left turns are an abomination.

Vegetarian food includes ham and that it's hard to explain topless

beaches to three-year-olds, so better not to try. I'm joined by John Dickerson, Slate's

chief political correspondent and political director of CBS News, who is on a grapefruit and vitamin

diet to prepare himself for two weeks of political convention going. Emily Bazelon is on

vacation, sadness, tears, despair. But joining in her stead wide, toothy grin is double-x editor

and Atlantic senior editor, author of the forthcoming end of men, and also my wife, Hannah Rosen. Hello, Hannah.

Hi. Do I not have a toothy grin? Is my grin not toothy? No, my grin is toothy. I was being toothy.

Gotcha. With delight that you're here. Thank you. My teeth are still sheathed behind my lips just for those who are drawing a representation of this at home.

The big news this week, after seven years of podcasting,

the Gab Fest is now going on the radio. Starting this week, Slate and New York's public radio

station, WNYC, are teaming up to turn the political Gab Fest and the culture Gab Fest into a radio show

that will be broadcast on weekends to the New York audience. and soon we hope to other audiences all around the country.

So the podcast that you're listening to now will still be exactly the same, but we'll also be airing an edited version for the WNYC audience.

Please tell your New York friends about it, recommend it, help bring us New York listeners.

...