Hurricane Irene, Timothy Ferriss, and Beyoncé's baby bump on this week's Culture Gabfest podcast.

Hurricane Irene, Timothy Ferriss, and Beyoncé's baby bump on this week's Culture Gabfest podcast.

Hurricane Irene, Timothy Ferriss, and Beyoncé's baby bump on this week's Culture Gabfest podcast.

Slate's weekly roundtable.
Aug. 31 2011 3:50 PM

The Culture Gabfest, "Babyoncé" Edition

Listen to Slate's show about Hurricane Irene, self-help guru Timothy Ferriss, and Beyoncé's baby bump.

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Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 154 with Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the audio player below or opening this player in another tab:

In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner survey the cultural wreckage of Hurricane Irene. Next, Gabfesters discuss Rebecca Mead's New Yorker article on Silicon Valley's self-help guru Timothy Ferriss. For their final segment, our critics weigh in on Beyoncé's pregnancy.

Here are some links to the things we discussed this week:

Howard Kurtz at the Daily Beast thinks Irene was all hype.
Nate Silver at his blog FiveThirtyEight defends the media attention.
A lovely video of a soggy and desolate NYC.
Rebecca Mead's New Yorker article on Timothy Ferriss.
Timothy Ferriss' personal blog.
The New York Times review of Timothy Ferriss' bestselling self-help book, The 4-Hour Body.
Stephen R. Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature.
Don Peck's Atlantic article "Can The Middle Class Be Saved?"
The official MTV website for the 2011 VMA Awards.
Entertainment Weekly's music blog on the Beyoncé baby news and resultant Twitter explosion.
Gawker's "name that celebrity baby bump" game.
Slide show of Beyoncé flaunting her bump on the VMA's red carpet.
Of course, Beyoncé wasn't the first celebrity to announce her pregnancy on television.

The Culture Gabfest weekly endorsements:

Steve's picks: Inconceivable! It's Rob Reiner's classic film The Princess Bride. Also, the '90s BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous.
Dana's pick: BBC's The Hour continues to impress. Also, Pianist Andrew Rangell talks Bach to Radio Open Source.
Julia's pick: Gmail's new preview pane, the anagrams game, and finally, the sitcom Frasier.

Outro: "This Wheel's on Fire" by Julie Driscoll and Adrian Edmondson.

You can email us at culturefest@slate.com.

This podcast was produced by Jesse Baker. Our intern is Matt Sigl.

Follow us on the new Culturefest Twitter feed. And please Like the Culture Gabfeston Facebook.

Stephen Metcalf is Slate’s critic at large. He is working on a book about the 1980s.

Dana Stevens is Slate’s movie critic.

Julia Turner, the former editor in chief of Slate, is a regular on Slate’s Culture Gabfest podcast.