Slow Burn

Decoder Ring | Who Was Lonelygirl15?

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 07:50:00 GMT

In the summer of 2006, a teenage girl began posting video diaries to a then-new site called YouTube under the handle lonelygirl15. Within weeks she was a phenomenon—even though no one knew the truth of who she really was. The frenzied quest to change that, to solve the mystery of lonelygirl15, would ultimately land her on the front page of newspapers and the covers of magazines. Twenty years on, lonelygirl15 is both an artifact of an earlier online era and an origin point for the internet as we know it: a place full of video diaries, parasocial relationships, influencers, hyper-engaged fandoms, and the knowledge that you can’t always believe your eyes.

In this episode, you’ll hear from some of the people who investigated lonelygirl15 way back in 2006: culture critic Virginia Heffernan, who writes the Substack Magic + Loss and co-hosts the podcast Omnishambles; entertainment journalist Richard Rushfield of The Ankler; Emmy Award-winning producer Jenni Powell; and one-time cybersleuth Chris Patterson. We also speak with the people involved in making lonelygirl15: Miles Beckett, Mesh Flinders, Jessica Rose Phillipps, and Amanda Goodfried.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin and Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s Supervising Producer. Decoder Ring is also produced by Willa Paskin, Katie Shepherd, and Max Freedman. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

Thank you to Greg Goodfried, Matt Foremski, and Tom Foremski. Special thanks to Ryan Broderick and Grant Irving of the podcast Panic World, who introduced Willa to the lonelygirl15 story on a recent episode of their show and suggested it might make a good topic for Decoder Ring.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Sources for This Episode

Cresci, Elena. “Lonelygirl15: how one mysterious vlogger changed the internet,” The Guardian, June 16, 2006.

Davis, Joshua. “The Secret World of Lonelygirl,” WIRED, Dec. 2006.

Falconer, Ellen. “An oral history of lonelygirl15,” RNZ, June 16, 2016.

Flemming, Brian. “Arguments for a real LG15 fall short,” Brian Flemming's Weblog, Aug. 25, 2006.

Foremski, Matt and Tom Foremski. “SVW Exclusive: The identity of LonelyGirl15,” Silicon Valley Watcher, Sep. 11, 2006.

Foremski, Tom. “How the secret identity of LonelyGirl15 was found,” Silicon Valley Watcher, Sep. 12, 2006.

Foremski, Tom. “The Hunt for LonelyGirl15: Life in a blogger household…,” Silicon Valley Watcher, Sep. 12, 2006.

Glaister, Dan. “Cult blog a fake, admit 'lonelygirl' creators,” The Guardian, Sep. 9, 2006.

Heffernan, Virginia and Tom Zeller Jr. “The Lonelygirl That Really Wasn’t,” New York Times, Sep. 13, 2006.

Heffernan, Virginia. “A Pause for Some Words From Bree,” New York Times, Aug. 23, 2006.

Heffernan, Virginia. “Sweet, Weird, Fraud or Other,” New York Times, Aug. 24, 2006.

“LGPedia,” LG15, 2016.

“lonelygirl15 and when lies could be fun,” Panic World, Feb. 4, 2026.

“Lonely Girl And All Her Friends,” On the Media, Sep. 1, 2006.

Nudd, Tim. “Lonelygirl15 still a mystery, for now,” ADWEEK, Sep. 1, 2006.

Rushfield, Richard and Claire Hoffman. “Lonelygirl15 Video Blog Is Brainchild of 3 Filmmakers,” Los Angeles Times, Sep. 13, 2006.

Rushfield, Richard and Claire Hoffman. “Mystery Fuels Huge Popularity of Web’s Lonelygirl15,” Los Angeles Times, Sep. 8, 2006.

Wendt, Milo A. “LonelyGirl15: It's Not So Lonely In The Bay Area,” milowent, Aug. 30, 2006.

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Decoder Ring | The Johnlock Conspiracy (Encore)

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 07:50:00 GMT

For over a century, fans of Sherlock Holmes have been analyzing, debating, and creating new texts with Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters. But when a fan theory emerged about the BBC TV show Sherlock that posited the inevitability of a gay romance between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson—it wreaked havoc on the community. In this episode, which originally aired in 2018, we explore the Johnlock Conspiracy, with help from historians, journalists, and the fans at the heart of the controversial idea. It’s almost a Holmesian tale itself, full of brilliant theories, false leads and mysterious motives—except for the ending, which, unlike in a Holmes story, isn’t very neat.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin. It was produced and edited by Benjamin Frisch, who also created the episode art. Shasha Leonárd provided production assistance, and Danielle Hewitt helped us fact check the episode. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd, Max Freedman, and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen.

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Decoder Ring | Was "Eyes Wide Shut" a Warning?

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 07:50:00 GMT

When Eyes Wide Shut opened in the summer of 1999, it was widely considered a disappointment. This final film from legendary director Stanley Kubrick had been sold as an erotic thriller, and potentially even a peek into the real sex lives of its then-married stars, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. But Eyes Wide Shut was stranger than that: a meditative art film whose much-hyped orgy scene is more creepy than sexy, run by a cabal of rich and powerful men who prey on young women.

But Eyes Wide Shut has received a burst of new attention in the last few years, amid constant revelations about a real-life cabal of rich and powerful men who prey on young women. Across the internet, cinema sleuths have been asking: is it possible Eyes Wide Shut was not fictional? Was Stanley Kubrick trying to warn the world about a real conspiracy? And if so… was he murdered for it?

In this episode of Decoder Ring, we follow Lane Brown—a lifelong Kubrick fan and features writer for New York Magazine—as he investigates this conspiracy theory and what it says about how we deal with ugly facts and murky fictions.

This episode was written and produced by Max Freedman and edited by Willa Paskin. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Sources for This Episode

Barbezat, Michael. “‘Pizzagate’ and the Nocturnal Ritual Fantasy: Imaginary Cults, Fake News, and Real Violence,” The Public Medievalist, May 4, 2017.

Brown, Lane. “The Eyes Wide Shut Conspiracy,” New York Magazine, Dec. 17, 2025.

Ebiri, Bilge. “An Oral History of an Orgy,” New York Magazine, June 27, 2019.

Nicholson, Amy. “The Year Tom Cruise Gave Not One but Two Dangerously Vulnerable Performances,” The New York Times, Aug. 27, 2024.

Raftery, Brian. “Dream Team: Cruise, Kidman, Kubrick, and the making of Eyes Wide Shut,” New York Magazine, Apr. 15, 2019.

Shapiro, Lila. “What I Learned After Watching Eyes Wide Shut 100 Times,” New York Magazine, July 1, 2019.

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Decoder Ring | A Prune by Any Other Name

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 08:50:00 GMT

The delicious, healthful prune has long had a cross to bear: It’s best known for making people poop. In the late 1990s, the California Prune Board set out on a quixotic mission to amend this sales-flattening reputation. It would attempt to rechristen this ancient fruit in the hopes the prune could one day be as unencumbered as an apricot, a raisin, or a fig.

In a world where every product and person increasingly believes it’s one good rebrand away from changing how they are seen, the story of the prune’s attempt to become the “dried plum” is a telling tale about the impossibility of escaping who you really are—and the freedom that comes with self-acceptance.

You’ll hear from Richard Peterson, retired Executive Director of the California Prune Board; food writer and chef David Liebovitz; lawyer and lobbyist Dan Haley; and Kiaran Locy, Director of Brand and Industry Communications at the California Prune Board.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin. It was edited by Evan Chung, our supervising producer. It was produced by Katie Shepherd. Decoder Ring is also produced by Max Freedman. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Sources for This Episode

Barry, Dave. Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway, Ballantine Books, 2002.

Brasher, Philip. “FDA Approves Prune Name Change,” ABC News, Feb. 1, 2001.

Brasher, Philip. “Where's the beef? Kids give prune burgers the taste test,” Associated Press, Jan 29, 2002.

Cimons, Marlene. “A New Wrinkle for the Prune Industry,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 21, 1999.

Crespi, John M., Harry M. Kaiser, Julian M. Alston, and Richard J. Sexton. “The Evaluation of Prune Promotion by the California Dried Plum Board,” The Economics of Commodity Promotion Programs: Lessons from California, Peter Lang USA, 2005.

Davis, Glenn. “French History in Your City: San Jose, California - the Pellier Brothers,” Yale National Initiative, Sep. 2015.

Fabricant, Florence. “In France, the Prune Holds a Noble Station,” The New York Times, Oct. 31, 2001.

Fabricant, Florence. “Responsible Party: Richard Peterson; Rejuvenating The Humble Prune,” The New York Times, Aug. 13, 2000.

Fabricant, Florence. “Underapprecaited: The Humble Prune,” The New York Times, Oct. 12, 1983.

A Fortune In Two Old Trunks. Sunsweet, 1947.

Fullan, Genevieve. “In Defense of Prunes,” Eater, Jun 21, 2022.

Gellene, Denise. “New Wrinkle in an Old Story,” Los Angeles Times, Oct 16, 1997.

Good Wrinkles. Sunsweet, 1951.

Kamen, Al. “Sunday in the Loop: Plum Outta Luck,” Washington Post, Dec. 11, 1999.

Koger, Chris. “Dried plums no longer: California prunes have new brand,” The Packer, Nov. 15, 2022.

Lucas, Greg. “Who'd Have Thought? Pruneburgers / Juicy, tender and low-fat, they're surprising hits in school cafeterias,” San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 9, 1999.

Martin, Ronda Beaman. “Stan Freberg—His Credits and Contributions to Advertising,” M.A. Thesis, Texas Tech University, Dec. 1986.

McKay, Leonard. “Louis Pellier,” San Jose Inside, Sep. 25, 2006.

Morse, Rob. “Hold the prunes, hold the lettuce,” San Francisco Examiner, July 28, 1999.

“Prune gets $10 million makeover -- as dried plum,” CNN, Sep. 13, 2000.

Rao, Tejal. “In Praise of the Prune,” The New York Times Magazine, Feb. 16, 2017.

Roach, Mary. “The power of prunes,” Salon, Nov. 5, 1999.

Waters, Michael. “When the Dried Plum Lobby Tried to Make Pruneburgers Happen,” Atlas Obscura, April 13, 2018.

Zasky, Jason. “Prunes: Turning Over a New Leaf,” Failure Magazine, Apr. 16, 2002.

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Decoder Ring | Making Coal Cute Again

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 08:50:00 GMT

Three weeks ago, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum shared an unusual tweet: a cartoon image of himself with his arm draped around a giant, anthropomorphized lump of coal. This piece of coal has big googly eyes and a smudge of a nose, and is wearing a safety vest and a hard hat. He is, frankly, adorable—and he has a name: Coalie.

When Coalie first appeared on the internet, he went viral—ridiculed on social media, in newsletters, and even on late night talk shows. And that’s because this big-eyed, cute piece of coal was widely understood to be coal propaganda, a tool to soften the coal industry’s image.

But the truth about Coalie is more complicated. His origins tell a story about what it’s like for federal employees to try to do their work while navigating the Trump administration’s agenda. Coalie may be widely seen as a mascot for coal mining, but that’s not what he was made for.

In this episode, you’ll hear from Simone Randolph, Director of Communications for the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE); Sara Eckert, formerly of OSMRE; Slate staff writer Nitish Pahwa; and Leah Stokes, who researches climate and energy policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara and co-hosts the podcast A Matter of Degrees.

Thank you to Daniel Raimi, Tony Ho Tran, and Hannah Northey.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin and Evan Chung and produced by Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. Our show is also produced by Max Freedman and Katie Shepherd. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

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Decoder Ring | Is Culture Stuck?

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 08:50:00 GMT

It’s a weird time for culture. There is more of it than ever before, it’s more accessible than ever before, but so little of it feels original. New movies are based on old stories, new songs are recycling old hooks, and fashion trends are cycling so fast that everything’s in.

Has our culture grown stagnant? The author and culture critic W. David Marx thinks so.

His new book, Blank Space, argues that there is a “blank space” in the 21st century where cultural innovation should be. In this episode, David explains to Willa how culture change worked in the 20th century, what changed after the turn of the millennium, and what we might do about it.

This episode was produced by Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is also produced by Willa Paskin, Katie Shepherd, and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

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Decoder Rings Back | Why the Mona Lisa?

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 08:50:00 GMT

We are really lucky to get lots of listener suggestions for the show, more good questions than we can possibly answer in a mailbag episode once or twice a year. So we’re starting a new segment we call… Decoder Rings Back! Every month, host Willa Paskin will personally call up a listener to answer their question.

In this inaugural installment of Decoder Rings Back, Willa calls up listener Dustin Malek about his cultural mystery: Why did the Mona Lisa, of all paintings,

become the most famous in the world, bar none? Willa shares the story of daring heist that turned Leonardo da Vinci’s enigmatic smiling subject into a celebrity.

Future episodes of Decoder Rings Back will only be available to Slate Plus subscribers. So if you want to be sure not to miss them, sign up for Slate Plus! You’ll get exclusive episodes and ad-free listening not just on our show, but all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen.

This episode was produced by Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Sources for This Episode

Cumming, Laura. “The man who stole the Mona Lisa,” The Guardian, August 5, 2011.

Hoobler, Dorothy, and Thomas Hoobler. “Stealing Mona Lisa,” Vanity Fair, April 16, 2009.

Hoobler, Dorothy, and Thomas Hoobler. The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection, Bison Books, 2010.

Isaacson, Walter. Leonardo da Vinci, Simon & Schuster, 2018.

Roberts, Sam. “Happy Birthday to the Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa and Took It to Italy,” The New York Times, October 7, 2022.

Sassoon, Donald. “Mona Lisa: The Best-Known Girl in the Whole Wide World,” History Workshop Journal, Spring 2001.

Sassoon, Donald. Mona Lisa: The History of the World’s Most Famous Painting, HarperCollins, 2016.

“The Theft That Made The 'Mona Lisa' A Masterpiece,” NPR, July 30, 2011.

Zug, James. “Stolen: How the Mona Lisa Became the World’s Most Famous Painting,” Smithsonian Magazine, June 15, 2011.

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The Slate Culture Gift Guide

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 17:43:00 GMT

Hark, the holiday season is upon us—and with it the most solemn of festive traditions: a gift guide! In this video and podcast special, Slate hosts Dana Stevens, Chris Molanphy, and Willa Paskin beam-in from their collective hearths to deliver unto the internet their favorite gifts for culture lovers this holiday. In addition to sharing gifts, they also discuss the cultural artifact that is the “holiday gift guide,” and its history going back to the early 20th century, up to the modern day. See the entirety of the 1910 gift guide Our Special Holiday Gift-Book from Greenhut-Siegel Cooper, and Esquire’s ultra-mod gift guide from 1961.

Check out our gift recommendations below:

Dana Stevens’ Cozy Movie Night-In:

Chris Molanphy’s Hit Parade Collection:

Willa Paskin’s Fruit-Themed Trompe-l'œil Housewares:

The Slate Culture Gift Guide is produced for Slate Studios by Benjamin Frisch and Micah Phillips, with Meryl Bezrutczyk and Andrew Harding.

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Decoder Ring | Mailbag: Yo-Yos, Sandboxes, and Encores

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 08:50:00 GMT

Decoder Ring listeners write in with some excellent mysteries, and for our last episode of the year we’re solving three of them. Why do children play in boxes full of sand? Why do rock bands pretend like the show is over when everybody knows they’re coming back for an encore? And what was up with those school assemblies where you’d get to skip class to learn about…yo-yos?

The voices you’ll hear in this episode include yo-yo masters ”Dazzling Dave” Schulte and Dale Oliver, children’s book author Rob Peñas, Pulitzer Prize-winning design critic Alexandra Lange, and music journalists Brian Wise, Michael Walker, and Travis Andrews.

You can find all the music from the segment about encores in this YouTube playlist.

This episode was produced by Max Freedman, Katie Shepherd, and Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. We had additional production from Joel Meyer.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

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Decoder Ring | “Videomate: Men” (Encore)

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 08:50:00 GMT

Videomate: Men was a VHS tape released in 1987 featuring 60 single men pitching themselves as dates to women on the other side of the TV screen: “The love of your life could be on your TV tonight!” the box reads. In retrospect, Videomate: Men is a bizarre and hilarious time capsule, but at the time it was one of many manifestations of what was known as video dating. To find out how anyone thought this was a good idea, Decoder Ring examines the weird and forgotten world of video dating in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s to find out why video dating once seemed like the future—and if that future is still yet to come.

On this episode, originally released in 2019, we talk to the creators of the Found Footage Fest, VHS collectors who unleashed Videomate on the internet; ask the creators of video dating services like Videomate’s Steve Dworman and Great Expectations’ Jeffrey Ullman what they were thinking; and talk to participants who used these services but not necessarily in the way that was intended. We’ll also discuss the future of video dating with Coffee Meets Bagel co-founder Dawoon Kang and former host of The Longest Shortest Time Andrea Silenzi.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin and was produced and edited by Benjamin Frisch. We had research assistance from Cleo Levin. Decoder Ring is produced by Katie Shepherd, Max Freedman, and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com, or leave a message on the Decoder Ring hotline at 347-460-7281. We love to hear any and all of your ideas for the show.

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Decoder Ring | How Protein Muscled Its Way to the Top

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 08:50:00 GMT

Americans are currently besotted with protein. It’s touted as being good for muscle growth, weight loss, skincare, mental acuity, longevity, and much else besides. It’s sold to men, women, children, the elderly— you can even buy protein for your pets. The protein supplement market alone is worth $21 billion and growing—and extra protein is being added to coffee, cereal, pasta, beer, ice cream, and popcorn.

But as frenzied as we currently are about protein, this is not the first protein boom—or even the second. Protein has been promoted as a charismatic, cure-all nutrient for nearly two centuries. In this episode, with the help of Samantha King and Gavin Weedon, the authors of Protein: The Making of a Nutritional Superstar, we look closely at all our protein crazes and their associated protein products—from beef tea to whey powder—and see what they can tell us about our current protein mania.

This episode was produced by Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is also produced by Willa Paskin, Katie Shepherd, and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. We had editing support from Josh Levin and fact-checking by Sophie Summergrad. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Sources for This Episode

King, Samantha and Gavin Weedon. Protein: The Making of a Nutritional Superstar, Duke University Press, 2026.

Baker, Ryan. “Protein has become America's latest obsession. Companies like General Mills and PepsiCo are capitalizing on it,” CNBC, July 22, 2025.

Brock, William H. Justus von Liebig: The Chemical Gatekeeper, Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Callahan, Alice. “The More Protein, the Better?” New York Times, April 9, 2025.

Draper, Kevin. “America’s Protein Obsession Is Transforming the Dairy Industry,” New York Times, July 16, 2025.

Gayomali, Chris. “Big Food Gets Jacked: How protein mania took over the American grocery store,” New York Magazine, Feb. 12, 2025.

“The Great Protein Fiasco,” Maintenance Phase, Aug. 31, 2021.

Liebig, Justus von. Researches on the Chemistry of Food, Taylor and Walton, 1847.

McLaren, Donald S. “The Great Protein Fiasco,” The Lancet, 1974.

Oncken, John. “Stingy, 'half-way' dairy farmer's curiosity changed the world,” Wisconsin State Farmer, April 27, 2022.

“Subject of Whey Disposal Discussed in UW Bulletin.” Wausau Daily Herald, Aug. 28, 1965.

Torrella, Kenny. “You’re probably eating way too much protein,” Vox, Jan. 30, 2024.

Wilson, Bee. “Protein mania: the rich world’s new diet obsession,” The Guardian, Jan. 4, 2019.

Wu, Katherine J. “Should We All Be Eating Like The Rock?” The Atlantic, Aug. 28, 2023.

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Decoder Ring | Cozy Autumn Mysteries

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 08:50:00 GMT

Autumn may have more cozy signifiers than any other season—though we all have our own favorites. Maybe for you it’s sweater weather, football games, spooky season, apple picking, leaf peeping, or mainlining candy corn. Whatever it is, in today’s episode we’re looking closely at three of these autumnal staples.

First, we get to the bottom of a recurring complaint about the taste of the pumpkin spice latte. Then we gaze deep inside the enigma hiding inside colorful fall leaves. Finally we ask some hard-hitting questions about the seasonal availability of an elusive cookie. Snuggle up and enjoy!

In this episode, you’ll hear from author and podcaster Don Martin who has a new audiobook out about loneliness called Where Did Everybody Go?. We also speak with Simcha Lev-Yadun, professor of botany and archeology; Susanne Renner, botanist and honorary professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis; and Prospect Park Alliance arborist Malcom Gore. And you’ll also hear from Lauren Tarr, who runs the blog Midlife Moxie and Muscle, and her mother Grace Dewey, along with Caroline Suppiger, brand manager at Mondelēz.

We’d also like to thank Brian Gallagher, Tom Arnold, Sylvie Russo and Laura Robinson.

This episode was produced by Katie Shepherd. Decoder Ring is also produced by Willa Paskin, Max Freedman, and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

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Decoder Ring | The Red String Board Conspiracy

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 07:50:00 GMT

There’s a ubiquitous prop in just about every police procedural and conspiracy thriller: a cork board pinned with documents, newspaper clippings, and Polaroid photos, all connected by a web of red string. They go by many names, including pin boards, string boards, evidence boards, investigation walls, conspiracy walls, and walls of crazy. These boards can be vehicles of insight or manifestations of madness—and in many cases, both. But where did they come from? And can they really solve a crime?

In this episode, we try to unwind the red string board all the way to its center. To aide in our investigation, we enlist the help of Aki Peritz, a former CIA analyst and the author of Disruption: Inside the Largest Counterterrorism Investigation in History. You’ll also hear from Shawn Gilmore, editor of The Vault of Culture and creator of the Narrative String Theory project; and Dr. Anne Ganzert, author of Serial Pinboarding in Contemporary Television. And we learn about the intricacies of building a string board from production designers Michael Scott Cobb (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and John D. Kretschmer (Homeland).

This episode was written and produced by Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. It was edited by Willa Paskin. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Sources for This Episode

Benson, Richard. “Decoding the Detective's 'Crazy Wall',” Esquire, Jan. 22, 2015.

Coley, Rob. “The case of the speculative detective: Aesthetic truths and the television ‘crime board’,” NECSUS, May 28, 2017.

Ganzert, Anne. Serial Pinboarding in Contemporary Television, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.

Gilmore, Shawn. “Narrative String Theory,” The Vault of Culture.

McGarry, Andrew. “Did Orwell's nightmare Nineteen Eighty-Four inspire the Snowtown murders?” Australian Broadcasting Corporation News, May 21, 2019.

Peritz, Aki. Disruption: Inside the Largest Counterterrorism Investigation in History, Potomac Books, 2021.

Peritz, Aki. “The FBI Is Going Crazy-Stringboard Crazy,” Slate, Feb. 1, 2022.

Stiehm, Jamie. “My So-Called Bipolar Life,” New York Times, Jan. 17, 2012.

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When We All Get to Heaven | Setting the Table

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 19:23:00 GMT

In 1993, more than 10 years into the AIDS epidemic, the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco (MCC-SF) tries to remember all they’ve lost. We think about remembering too after encountering an archive of 1,200 cassette recordings of this queer church’s services during the height of the epidemic. Whether you’re a regular church goer or would never step into one, we invite you to spend time with this LGBTQ+ San Francisco church as it struggles to reconcile sexuality and faith in the midst of an existential crisis.

For images and links about this episode visit https://www.heavenpodcast.org/episode-1.

About the montage: The worship service in this episode was on February 28, 1993. The Dyke March proclamation was written and read by Rev. Lea Brown. Rev. Karen Foster read the statement that sexual orientation does not need to be changed. Jim Mitulski recalled his hospital visit with the man who recognized him by his shape. Paul Francis told strangers at a restaurant to get ugly lovers and Eric Rofes told his mother that he was going to stay safe and keep having sex. Cleve Jones had the vision of a thousand rotting corpses, Rev. Ron Russell Coons preached that we have AIDS as a community, and Rev. Troy Perry proclaimed a revival on Eureka Street. The other people heard in the episode are either unknown or did not want to be named.

When We All Get to Heaven is produced by Eureka Street Productions. It is co-created by Lynne Gerber, Siri Colom, and Ariana Nedelman. Our story editor is Sayre Quevedo. Our sound designer is David Herman. Our managing producer is Krissy Clark. Tim Dillinger is our consulting producer and Betsy Towner Levine is our fact-checker. We had additional story editing help from Sarah Ventre, Arwen Nicks, Allison Behringer, and Krissy Clark. For a complete list of credits, please visit http://heavenpodcast.org/credits.

This project received generous support from individual donors, the Henry Luce Foundation (www.hluce.org), the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, and California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities (www.CalHum.org).

Eureka Street Productions has 501c3 status through our fiscal sponsor FJC: A Foundation of Philanthropic Funds.

The music for this episode is from the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco’s archive. It was performed by MCC-SF’s musicians and members with Bob Crocker and Jack Hoggatt-St.John as music directors. Additional music is by Tasty Morsels.

Thanks to

Paul Katz and Henry Machen for permission to use “June in San Francisco” from their fabulous 1991 musical Dirty Dreams of a Clean Cut Kid.
The estate of Leonard Bernstein for the use of “Somewhere” from West Side Story.

Great thanks, as always, to the members and clergy of the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco who made this project possible.

Get more Outward with Slate Plus! Join for weekly bonus episodes of Outward and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Outward show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or visit slate.com/outwardplus for access wherever you listen.

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Decoder Ring | What the Cuck?!

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 07:50:00 GMT

Earlier this year, a tweet went out from the official account of the Democratic Party, tagging the Trump advisor Stephen Miller. It was an image of what appeared to be a simple hotel room chair. But for those in the know, it was much more than that: It was a “cuck chair,” an online meme straight out of a popular genre of hardcore pornography in which a man watches his partner have sex with another man.

How did we get to a place where the Democrats could flame a political opponent with an image out of cucking porn and have millions of people immediately understand it? In this episode we trace the complicated and intricate history of the cuck. It’s a history that includes everything from Jacobean dramas to World War II pilots to, yes, pornography, as well as a host of deeply American prejudices that have become a lot less submerged over the last 10 years. And we also situate the cuck within a larger context, one in which porn is the elephant in the room of American culture. It’s a potent force, shaping and reflecting our very wants and desires and it is constantly seeping into mainstream culture—and yet we don’t analyze, critique, or even talk about it very much because, well, it’s porn.

In this NSFW episode, you’ll hear from: Slate staff writer Luke Winkie who wrote about the tweet that kicked this episode off; Samantha Cole, one of co-founders of 404 Media and the author of How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex; Jennifer Panek, professor of English at the University of Ottawa; sex therapist and clinical psychologist Dr. David S. Ley; Dr. Justin Lehmiller, social psychologist, senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute, and podcast host; Mireille Miller-Young, associate professor of feminist studies at UC Santa Barbara and the author of A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography, and New York Magazine tech columnist John Herrman.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin. It was edited by Josh Levin and produced by Katie Shepherd, Willa Paskin, Max Freedman, and Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director, and we had help from Sophie Summergrad.

We’d also like to thank Gabriel Roth, Talia Lavin, Tatum Hunter, Rebecca Fasman, Jessica Stoya, Aiden Starr, Perrin Swanmoore, Sophie Gilbert, and Kevin Heffernan, who was a fount of knowledge.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

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Decoder Ring | Why Do Actors Act Like They Can Sing?

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 07:50:00 GMT

When an actor opens their mouth to sing in a movie, chances are high that the voice you hear will be their own. Even in music biopics, movie stars without much singing experience regularly go to great lengths to impersonate the most beloved vocalists of our time. Why not simply play Johnny Cash or Bruce Springsteen’s actual recordings, the reasons why we care about them in the first place? When the world is full of beautiful singing voices, why force Pierce Brosnan to bray his way through Mamma Mia?

What you hear when an actor unhinges their jaw is a matter that Hollywood has been negotiating since the dawn of sound. So in this episode, we’ll learn about the “ghost singers” of classic Hollywood musicals, find out why they went extinct, and why today’s music biopics so often fudge the music. Then we leave Hollywood for Bollywood, where the rise of the celebrity “playback singer” shows what can happen when good singing is the highest priority.

In this episode, you’ll hear from Slate’s pop music critic Jack Hamilton; musicologist Dominic Broomfield-McHugh, editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Hollywood Musical; Stephen Cole, co-author of a memoir by the ghost singer Marni Nixon; Isaac Butler, longtime Slate contributor and scholar of American acting; and Nasreen Munni Kabir, who has written several books on Hindi cinema and curates Indian films for the UK’s Channel 4.

If you want to listen to any of the songs you heard in this episode in full, you can find them all on this Spotify playlist.

This episode was written and produced by Max Freedman. It was edited by Willa Paskin and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Sources for This Episode

Basinger, Jeanine. The Movie Musical! Alfred A. Knopf, 2019.

Beaster-Jones, Jayson. Bollywood Sounds: The Cosmopolitan Mediations of Hindi Film Song, Oxford University Press, 2015.

Butler, Isaac. The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act, Bloomsbury, 2022.

Hamilton, Jack. “The Problem With Music Biopics Is Bigger Than Just the Cliches,” Slate, May 17, 2024.

Kabir, Nasreen Munni. Lata Mangeshkar ...in Her Own Voice, Niyogi Books, 2009.

Nixon, Marni with Stephen Cole. I Could Have Sung All Night: My Story, Billboard Books, 2006.

Robbins, Allison. “‘Experimentations by Our Sound Department’: Playback Stars in 1930s Hollywood.” Star Turns in Hollywood Musicals, edited by Chabrol Marguerite and Toulza Pierre-Olivier, Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre, 2017.

Srivastava, Sanjay. “Voice, Gender and Space in Time of Five-Year Plans: The Idea of Lata Mangeshkar,” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 39, no. 20, 2004.

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Decoder Ring | Jane Fonda’s Workout, Part 2: Hanoi Jane’s VHS Revolution (Encore)

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 07:50:00 GMT

In part two of our special two-part episode, we return to the 1982 VHS tape that created the at-home video industry: Jane Fonda’s Workout. On this episode, originally released in 2020, we deconstruct the tape itself, how it was made, and why anyone thought it was a good idea in the first place. Then we’ll explore how it was possible for an extremely polarizing political activist, despised by some for her activism during the Vietnam War, to become America’s premier exercise guru. It’s a story that involves one enterprising home video visionary, dozens of ridiculous celebrity workout tapes, Tricky Dick Nixon, and one very full life.

Some of the voices you’ll hear on this episode include Jane Fonda; Court Shannon, former Karl Video employee; and Mary Hershberger, author of Jane Fonda’s War.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin. It was edited and produced by Benjamin Frisch. We had research assistance from Cleo Levin. Decoder Ring is produced by Katie Shepherd, Max Freedman, and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

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Decoder Ring | Jane Fonda’s Workout, Part 1: Jane and Leni (Encore)

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 07:50:00 GMT

In 1982, the Jane Fonda Workout became the best-selling home video of all time. Over decades, it and its 22 follow ups would spawn a fitness empire, sell more than 17 million copies, and transform Fonda into a leg-warmer-clad exercise guru. And 40 years after its initial release, when the COVID pandemic hit, the workout had a moment yet again. People began doing it alone and on Zoom, tweeting about it, writing about it. So when Jane Fonda agreed to talk to us, we set out to do an episode about it—but it did not go as planned.

On Part 1 of a special two-part Decoder Ring, originally released in 2020, we explore the decades-long relationship of Jane Fonda and Leni Cazden, a fraught friendship that birthed the VHS workout that changed the world. It’s a story of creation, fame, forgiveness, trauma, betrayal, survival, politics, and exercise. You’ll hear from Jane Fonda and Leni Cazden, the brain behind the workout, and Shelly McKenzie, author of Getting Physical: The Rise of Fitness Culture in America.

In two weeks we’ll return with Part 2: the nitty gritty story of the bestselling VHS tape of all time.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com, or leave a message on the Decoder RIng hotline at 347-460-7281. We love to hear any and all of your ideas for the show.

Sources for This Episode

Burke, Carol. Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane, and the High-and-Tight, Beacon Press, 2005.

Fonda, Jane. My Life So Far, Random House, 2005.

Hershberger, Mary. Jane Fonda's War: A Political Biography of an Antiwar Icon, The New Press, 2005.

Lembcke, Jerry. Hanoi Jane: War, Sex, and Fantasies of Betrayal, University of Massachusetts Press, 2010.

McKenzie, Shelly. Getting Physical: The Rise of Fitness Culture in America, University Press of Kansas, 2013.

Perlstein, Rick. Nixonland, Scribner, 2009.

Rafferty, James Michael. “Politicising Stardom: Jane Fonda, IPC Films and Hollywood, 1977-1982,” Queen Mary University of London Dissertation, 2010.

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Decoder Ring | How to Hunt a Mammoth, and Other Experiments in Archaeology

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 07:50:00 GMT

Experimental archeology is, simply put, archeology that involves running experiments. Where traditional archaeologists may study, research, analyze, and theorize about how artifacts were made or used, experimental archaeologists actually try to recreate, test, and use them to see what they can learn. In doing so, they have given the field a whole new way to glean clues and get insights into the lives of our ancestors.

Sam Kean is the author of a new book all about experimental archaeology called Dinner with King Tut. With help from him and a few archaeologists, we dig into a number of puzzles that experimental archaeology has helped solve—conundrums involving ancient megafauna, bizarre cookware, and deep sea voyages.

In this episode, you’ll hear from archaeologists Susan Kaplan of Bowdoin College and Karen Harry of University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Native Hawaiian activist and storyteller Nāʻālehu Anthony.

To learn more about the story of Hokule’a and its first navigator, Mau Piailug, watch Nāʻālehu Anthony’s 2010 documentary, Papa Mau: The Wayfinder, as well as The Navigators: Pathfinders of the Pacific.

This episode was produced by Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is also produced by Willa Paskin and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. We had mixing help from Kevin Bendis.

We’d also like to thank Metin Eren and Paul Benham.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

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Decoder Ring | The Bad-Mouthing of British Teeth

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 07:50:00 GMT

From The Simpsons’ Big Book of British Smiles to Austin Powers’ ochre-tinged grin, American culture can’t stop bad-mouthing English teeth. But why? Are they worse than any other nation’s? June Thomas drills down into the origins of the stereotype, and discovers that the different approaches to dentistry on each side of the Atlantic have a lot to say about our national values.

In this episode, you’ll hear from historians Mimi Goodall, Mathew Thomson, and Alyssa Picard, author of Making the American Mouth; and from professor of dental public health Richard Watt.

This episode was written by June Thomas and edited and produced by Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. Our show is also produced by Willa Paskin, Katie Shepherd, and Max Freedman. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Sources for This Episode

Goodall, Mimi. “Sugar in the British Atlantic World, 1650-1720,” DPhil dissertation, Oxford University, 2022.

Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, Penguin Books, 1986.

Picard, Alyssa. Making the American Mouth: Dentists and Public Health in the Twentieth Century, Rutgers University Press, 2009.

Thomson, Mathew. “Teeth and National Identity,” People’s History of the NHS.

Trumble, Angus. A Brief History of the Smile, Basic Books, 2004.

Wynbrandt, James. The Excruciating History of Dentistry: Toothsome Tales & Oral Oddities from Babylon to Braces, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000.

Watt, Richard, et al. “Austin Powers bites back: a cross sectional comparison of US and English national oral health surveys,” BMJ, Dec. 16, 2015.

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Decoder Ring | Mailbag: Drug Names, Cow Abductions, and the “Ass-Intensifier”

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 07:50:00 GMT

In this episode we’re opening our mailbag to answer three fascinating questions from our listeners. How did “ass,” a word for donkeys and butts, become what linguists call an “intensifier” for just about everything? How do pharmaceuticals get their wacky names? And why do we all seem to think that aliens from outer space would travel to Earth just to kidnap our cows?

In this episode, you’ll hear from linguistics professor Nicole Holliday, historians Greg Eghigian and Mike Goleman, and professional “namer” Laurel Sutton.

This episode of Decoder Ring was produced by Willa Paskin, Max Freedman, and Katie Shepherd. Our supervising producer is Evan Chung. Merritt Jacob is Slate’s Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at DecoderRing@slate.com, or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281.

Sources for This Episode

Bengston, Jonas. “Post-Intensifying: The Case of the Ass-Intensifier and Its Similar but Dissimilar Danish Counterpart,” Leviathan, 2021.

Collier, Roger. “The art and science of naming drugs,” Canadian Medical Association Journal, Oct. 2014.

Eghigian, Greg. After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon, Oxford University Press, 2024.

Goleman, Michael J. “Wave of Mutilation: The Cattle Mutilation Phenomenon of the 1970s,” Agricultural History, 2011.

Karet, Gail B. “How Do Drugs Get Named?” AMA Journal of Ethics, Aug. 2019.

Miller, Wilson J. “Grammaticalizaton in English: A Diachronic and Synchronic Analysis of the "ass" Intensifier,” Master’s Thesis, San Francisco State University, 2017.

Monroe, Rachel. “The Enduring Panic About Cow Mutilations,” The New Yorker, May 8, 2023.

A Strange Harvest, dir. Linda Moulton Howe, KMGH-TV, 1980.

“United States Adopted Names naming guidelines,” AMA.

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Decoder Ring | The White Noise Boom

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 07:50:00 GMT

White noise has a very precise technical definition, but people use the term loosely, to describe all sorts of washes of sound—synthetic hums, or natural sounds like a rainstorm or crashing waves—that can be used to mask other sounds. Twenty years ago, if you’d told someone white noise was a regular part of your life, they would have found that unusual. Nowadays, it’s likely they use it themselves or know someone who does. The global white noise business is valued at $1.3 billion; TikTok is full of people trumpeting its powers; and Spotify users alone listen to three million hours of it daily. Far more of these sounds already exist than any one person could need—or use. And yet, more keep coming.

Looking out at this uncanny ocean of seemingly indistinguishable noises, we wanted to see if it was possible to put a human face on it; to understand why there is so much of it, and what motivates the people trying to soothe our desperate ears with sounds you're not really supposed to hear.

In this episode, you’ll hear from Elan Ullendorff, who writes the illuminating Substack Escape the Algorithm; Stéphane Pigeon, founder of myNoise; Brandon Reed, who runs Dwellspring; and Mack Haygood, author of Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control and host of the podcast Phantom Power.

We’d also like to thank Dan Berlau, Sarah Anderson, and Ashley Carman.

This episode was written by Katie Shepherd, Evan Chung, and Willa Paskin. It was produced by Katie Shepherd. We produce Decoder Ring with Max Freedman, and Evan is also our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at DecoderRing@slate.com, or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281.

Sources for This Episode

Anderson, Sarah. The Lost Art of Silence: Reconnecting to the Power and Beauty of Quiet, Shambhala Publications, 2023.

Blum, Dani. “Can Brown Noise Turn Off Your Brain?” New York Times, Sep. 23, 2022.

Carman, Ashley. “Spotify Looked to Ban White Noise Podcasts to Become More Profitable,” Bloomberg, Aug. 17, 2023.

Carman, Ashley. “Spotify to Cut Back Promotional Spending on White Noise Podcasts,” Bloomberg, Sep. 1, 2023.

Hagood, Mack. Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control, Duke University Press, 2019.

Pickens, Thomas A., Sara P. Khan, and Daniel J. Berlau. “White noise as a possible therapeutic option for children with ADHD,” Complementary Therapies in Medicine, Feb. 2019.

Riva, Michele Augusto, Vincenzo Cimino, and Stefano Sanchirico. “Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s 17th century white noise machine,” The Lancet Neurology, Oct. 2017.

Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen.

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Decoder Ring | The Boston Cinematic Universe

Wed, 18 Jun 2025 07:50:00 GMT

This episode is a first for Decoder Ring: a live show, recorded at the WBUR Festival in Boston, Massachusetts. Given the setting, we decided to take on a Boston-based cultural mystery: namely, the “Boston movie.” Beginning in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Hollywood has churned out a whole cycle of films drenched in Beantown’s particularities, crimes, crops, class conflicts, and accents, from The Departed to The Town. Why does a city smaller than El Paso or Jacksonville loom so large in the cinematic imagination? Why does Boston have a movie subgenre all its own? What makes a Boston movie a Boston movie?

With the help of three guests—film critic Ty Burr; Lisa Simmons, founder of the Roxbury International Film Festival; and Boston University linguist Danny Erker—we look closely at the history and heyday of the Boston movie: how The Friends of Eddie Coyle set the template, Good Will Hunting shoved the door wide open, and Mystic River ushered in an imperial phase. We discuss the importance of race and class to the Boston movie and the city itself, the role of homegrown movie stars like Ben Affleck and Mark Wahlberg, and, of course, the best and worst of Boston accents on film.

This episode of Decoder Ring was produced by Willa Paskin and Max Freedman. Our team also includes Katie Shepherd and supervising producer Evan Chung. Merritt Jacob is Slate’s Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at DecoderRing@slate.com, or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281.

Films referenced in this episode:

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Love Story (1970)
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)
The Brink’s Job (1978)
The Verdict (1982)
Quiz Show (1994)
Good Will Hunting (1997)
Squeeze (1997)
Monument Ave. (1998)
The Boondock Saints (1999)
Southie (1999)
Lift (2001)
Blue Hill Avenue (2001)
Mystic River (2003)
Fever Pitch (2005)
The Departed (2006)
Gone Baby Gone (2007)
The Fighter (2010)
The Town (2010)
Ted (2012)
Ted 2 (2015)
Black Mass (2015)
Spotlight (2015)

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Decoder Ring | The Laff Box (Encore)

Wed, 04 Jun 2025 07:50:00 GMT

Decoder Ring is marking its 100th episode this year. To celebrate, we’re revisiting our very first episode from 2018, which asks: What happened to the laugh track? For nearly five decades, the laugh track was ubiquitous, but beginning in the early 2000s, it fell out of sitcom fashion. What happened? How did we get from The Beverly Hillbillies to 30 Rock? In this episode we meet the man who created the laugh track, which originated as a homemade piece of technology, and trace that technology’s fall and the rise of a more modern idea about humor. With the help of historians, laugh track obsessives, the showrunners of One Day at a Time and the director of Sports Night, this episode asks if the laugh track was about something bigger than laughter.

You can read more in Willa’s article “The Man Who Perfected the Laugh Track” in Slate.

Links and further reading on some of the things we discussed on the show:

Interview with Ben Glenn II on the history of the laugh track in McSweeney’s
See a Charlie Douglas Laff Box on Antiques Roadshow
More of Paul Iverson’s work restoring laugh tracks and inserting them into new shows
The sitcom One Day at a Time
Friends without a Laugh Track by Sboss
“The Okeh Laughing Record”
Tommy Schlamme and Aaron Sorkin’s Sports Night

This episode was written by Willa Paskin. It was produced and edited by Benjamin Frisch, who also created the episode art. Decoder Ring is produced by Katie Shepherd, Max Freedman, and our supervising producer Evan Chung.

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Decoder Ring | The Glaring Problem with Headlights

Wed, 21 May 2025 07:50:00 GMT

Something seems to have happened to car headlights. In the last few years, many people have become convinced that they are much brighter than they used to be—and it’s driving them to the point of rage. Headlight glare is now Americans’ number one complaint on the road. The story of how and why we got here is illuminating and confounding. It’s what happens when an incredible technological breakthrough meets market forces, regulatory failure, and human foibles.

So if you feel like everyone’s driving around with their high beams on all the time, it’s not your imagination. What once seemed like an obscure technical concern has gone mainstream. But can the movement to reduce glare actually do something about the problem?

In this episode, you’ll hear from Nate Rogers, who wrote about the “headlight brightness wars” for The Ringer; Daniel Stern, automotive lighting expert and editor of Driving Vision News; and Paul Gatto, moderator of r/fuckyourheadlights.

This episode of Decoder Ring was written by Willa Paskin and Olivia Briley, and produced by Olivia Briley and Max Freedman. Our team also includes Katie Shepherd and supervising producer Evan Chung. Merritt Jacob is our Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at DecoderRing@slate.com, or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring | Off-the-Wall Stories of Off-Label Use

Wed, 07 May 2025 07:50:00 GMT

Products often tell you exactly how they’re intended to be used. But why leave it at that? As a culture, we have long had a knack for finding ingenious, off-label uses for things. In this episode, we take a close look at a few examples of products that are ostensibly meant for one thing, but are better known for something else entirely. We explore Q-tips, which we are explicitly told not to put into our ears; the Hitachi Magic Wand, the iconic sex toy marketed as a body massager; the musical washboard; and the children’s electrolyte solution Pedialyte that many adults swear by as a hangover cure.

You’ll hear from Hallie Lieberman, author of Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy; Jacqui Barnett of the Columbus Washboard Company; Christopher Wilson, curator and chair of the Division of Home and Community Life at the Smithsonian; musician and educator Súle Greg Wilson; zydeco musicians C.J. Chenier and Steve Nash; Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall, author of Hungover: The Morning After and One Man’s Quest for the Cure; as well as writers Roberto Ferdman, Dan Brooks, and Kaitlyn Tiffany.

Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin, Max Freedman, Katie Shepherd, and Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. We had additional production from Sofie Kodner. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Special thanks to Kate Sloan, Dr. Carol Queen, Bryony Cole, Amber Singer, Molly Born, Laura Selikson, and Nell McShane Wulfhart.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at DecoderRing@slate.com, or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281.

Sources for This Episode

Bishop-Stall, Shaughnessy. Hungover: The Morning After and One Man’s Quest for the Cure, Penguin, 2018.

Brooks, Dan. “Letter of Recommendation: Pedialyte,” New York Times Magazine, Jan. 26, 2017.

Comella, Lynn. Vibrator Nation: How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure, Duke University Press, 2017.

Dodson, Betty. “Having Sex with Machines: The Return of the Electric Vibrator,” Dodson and Ross, June 9, 2010.

Feran, Tim. “Pedialyte Is Not Just For Kids,” Columbus Dispatch, July 19, 2015.

Ferdman, Roberto A. “The strange life of Q-tips, the most bizarre thing people buy,” Washington Post, Jan. 20, 2016.

Kushner, David. “Inside Orgasmatron,” Village Voice, March 26, 1999.

Lieberman, Hallie. Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy, Pegasus Books, 2017.

Lieberman, Hallie. “Selling Sex Toys: Marketing and the Meaning of Vibrators in Early Twentieth-Century America,” Enterprise & Society, June 2016.

Russel, Ruth. “Hangover Remedies? I’ll Drink to That!,” Idaho Statesman, Jan. 1, 1978.

Sloan, Kate. Making Magic, 2024.

Tiffany, Kaitlyn. “How Pedialyte got Pedialit,” Vox, Sep. 10, 2018.

Williams, Dell. “The Roots of the Garden,” Journal of Sex Research, August 1990.

Wulfhart, Nell McShane. “The Best Hangover Cure,” Slate, Aug. 29, 2013.

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Decoder Ring | How “Chicken Soup” Sold Its Soul

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 07:50:00 GMT

Chicken Soup for the Soul was the brainchild of two motivational speakers who preach the New Thought belief system known as the Law of Attraction. For more than 30 years, the self-help series has compiled reader-submitted stories about kindness, courage, and perseverance into easily digestible books aimed at almost every conceivable demographic: Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, Chicken Soup for the Grandma’s Soul, Chicken Soup for the Golfer’s Soul, and on and on. Since 1993, these books have sold more than 500 million copies worldwide, becoming the best-selling non-fiction book series of all time.

But in recent years, the company has become many other things that seem lightyears away from inspirational publishing: a line of packaged foods, a DVD kiosk retailer, and a meme stock. In this episode, with the help of journalist Amanda Chicago Lewis, we tell the story of how this feel-good brand went from comfort food to junk.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin and Max Freedman and produced by Max. It was edited by Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. Our show is also produced by Katie Shepherd. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Special thanks to Rachel Strom.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at DecoderRing@slate.com, or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring | Spring Break Forever

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 07:50:00 GMT

The infamous annual ritual of spring break—where thousands of college students head to the same warm location and go crazy—can seem like it’s always been here. But it hasn’t. The spring break phenomenon is a holdover from midcentury teen culture that has endured by changing, just enough, to be passed from one generation to the next. In this episode we’re going from the beaches of Fort Lauderdale to Daytona, from the movie screen to the TV set, from MTV to Instagram reels, from its start to its surprisingly recognizable present, as we follow the evolving, self-reinforcing rite that is spring break.

You’ll hear from former MTV staffers Doug Herzog, Salli Frattini, Alan Hunter, and Joe Davola, along with John Laurie, Kaylee Morris, and Slate writer Scaachi Koul.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd and produced by Katie. It was edited by Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. Our show is also produced by Max Freedman. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

Thank you to Bob Friedman and Allan Cohen, producers of Spring Broke; David Cohn, Derreck Johnson, and Ivylise Simones.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at DecoderRing@slate.com, or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281.

Sources for This Episode

Koul, Scaachi. “From ‘Girls Gone Wild’ to ‘Your Body, My Choice’,” Slate, Dec. 13, 2024.

Laurie, John. “Spring Break: The Economic, Socio-Cultural and Public Governance Impacts of College Students on Spring Break Host Locations,” University of New Orleans Dissertation, Dec. 19, 2008.

Mormino, Gary R. Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams: A Social History of Modern Florida, University Press of Florida, 2008.

Schiltz, James. “Time to Grow Up: The Rise and Fall of Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale,” The Florida Historical Quarterly, Fall 2014.

Spring Broke, dir. Alison Ellwood, Bungalow Media + Entertainment, 2016.

Thompson, Derek. “2,000 Years of Partying: The Brief History and Economics of Spring Break,” The Atlantic, March 26, 2013.

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Decoder Ring | How Books About Things That Changed the World… Changed the World

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 07:50:00 GMT

Look in the nonfiction section of any bookstore and you’ll find dozens of history books making the same bold claim: that their narrow, unexpected subject somehow changed the world. Potatoes, kudzu, soccer, coffee, Iceland, bees, oak trees, sand, chickens—there are books about all of them, and many more besides, with the phrase “changed the world” or something similarly grandiose right there in the title. These books are sometimes called “microhistories” or “thing biographies” and they’ve been a trope in publishing for decades. In this episode, we establish where this trend came from, figure out why it’s been so persistent, and then we put a bunch of authors on the spot, asking them to make the case for why their subjects changed the world.

The writers you’ll hear from include:

Simon Garfield (Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World)
Mark Kurlansky (Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World)
George Gibson, publisher of Cod and Dava Sobel’s Longitude
Historian Bronwen Everill
Slate writer Henry Grabar (Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World)
Gastropod co-host Nicola Twilley (Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves)
Tim Queeney (Rope: How a Bundle of Twisted Fibers Became the Backbone of Civilization)
Leila Philip (Beaver Land: How One Weird Rodent Made America).

This episode was written by Willa Paskin and produced by Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman also produce our show. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

Thank you to Joshua Specht, author of Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America; Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World; Tina Lupton; Dan Kois; and Nancy Miller.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at DecoderRing@slate.com, or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Supercommunicators | 3. How to Have the Hardest Conversations

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 23:15:00 GMT

The final installment of our series explores the conversations that most of us dread, like frank discussions of our differences or a negative performance review at work. We often anticipate that these chats will go badly—and end in hurt feelings or embarrassment—but there are proven ways to make them easier to navigate.

Host Charles Duhigg talks with psychologist Jay Van Bavel about strategies for having the hardest conversations. And: Vernā Myers, Netflix’s former vice president for inclusion strategy, tells the story of what happened inside the company after an executive was fired for using a racial slur.

This Slate miniseries dives into the art and science of meaningful conversations, inspired by Duhigg’s bestselling book, Supercommunicators. The guides we mention in this episode can be found at charlesduhigg.com/tools/

Supercommunicators was produced by Sophie Summergrad and Derek John, who also did the sound design. Our technical director is Merritt Jacob and our supervising producer is Joel Meyer.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring | Truck Nutz (Encore)

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 07:50:00 GMT

Truck Nutz is a brand name for the dangling plastic testicles some people affix to the bumpers or hitches of their vehicles. Also sold as Bulls Balls, Your Nutz, and other brand names, these plastic novelties have a powerful symbolic charge and are often associated with a crass, macho, red state audience. But truck nuts are a surprisingly complicated signifier whose symbolic power is increasingly divorced from their real-world usage.

On this episode, we talk to owners and users of truck nuts, investigate the origins of the accessories, and deconstruct the meaning of these oft-joked-about symbols. We’ll also take a tour of other novelty testicle products, including Bike Balls (testicular bike lights), Gunsticles (plastic testicles for guns), and Neuticles (prosthetic testicles for neutered pets), to better understand the maligned symbolism of truck nuts.

Links and further reading on some of the things we discussed on the show:

Ad for Monster Truck Nuts
Truck Nutz Prank Call
Elie Mystal’s writing on truck nuts for Above the Law
Austin Vasectomy in Austin Texas

This episode was written by Willa Paskin and edited and produced by Benjamin Frisch. Decoder Ring is produced by Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman. Evan Chung is our supervising producer.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com. Or you can also call us now at our new Decoder Ring hotline at 347-460-7281. We love to hear any and all of your ideas for the show.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Supercommunicators | 2. How to Communicate Without Words

Sat, 01 Mar 2025 20:00:00 GMT

Why is it that we can tell someone “I’m totally fine!” and they instantly know we’re not? Gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice, and other subtle nonverbal cues play a huge role in how we connect with one another.

In this episode, host Charles Duhigg explores how we communicate without words, including a deep dive into the visual and tonal cues embedded in one of the biggest sitcoms of all time, The Big Bang Theory.

He talks with Dr. Dustin York, a professor at Maryville University who studies nonverbal communication and worked in public relations for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. He also sits down with Dave Goetsch, a co-executive producer and longtime writer for The Big Bang Theory, and journalist Jessica Radloff, who wrote an exhaustive book about the show.

This Slate miniseries dives into the art and science of meaningful conversations, inspired by

Duhigg’s bestselling book, Supercommunicators.

Supercommunicators was produced by Sophie Summergrad and Derek John, who also did the sound design. Our technical director is Merritt Jacob and our supervising producer is Joel Meyer.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring | Jerry Lewis’ Lost Holocaust Clown Movie

Wed, 26 Feb 2025 08:50:00 GMT

In 1972, Jerry Lewis—the actor and filmmaker known for slapstick comedies like The Nutty Professor—took the biggest risk of his career when he decided to make a drama called The Day The Clown Cried, about a circus clown who ends up in Auschwitz. This could have been a landmark as one of the first portrayals of the Holocaust in American cinema. Instead, it became a different kind of landmark: allegedly, one of the worst movies ever.

The Day The Clown Cried was never released, and only a handful of people have ever seen it. But the unbelievable concept alone has been enough to make this lost movie a holy grail for curious film buffs. In this episode of Decoder Ring, producer Max Freedman traces how The Day The Clown Cried became such a legendary disaster, why it’s impossible to see, and whether it actually deserves its rotten reputation.

You’ll hear from comedian Patton Oswalt; Shawn Levy, author of King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis; Henry Gonshak, author of Hollywood and the Holocaust; Chuck Denton, whose father Charles co-wrote The Day The Clown Cried; and Jean-Michel Frodon, film critic at slate.fr.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com. Or you can also call us now at our new Decoder Ring hotline at 347-460-7281. We’d love to hear any and all of your ideas for the show.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Supercommunicators | 1. How to Talk to Anyone

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 05:05:00 GMT

Why are some people able to talk with just about anyone—about almost anything? One answer may lie in the questions we ask—and how deeply we ask them. Stick with us here…

In this episode, host Charles Duhigg examines why deep questions are so powerful and how to ask them in everyday life.

He talks to Nick Epley, psychology professor at the University of Chicago and lifelong researcher of deep questions. And we catch up with Mandy Len Catron, 10 years after she wrote the viral New York Times article “The 36 Questions That Lead to Love.”

This Slate miniseries dives into the art and science of meaningful conversations, inspired by Duhigg’s bestselling book, Supercommunicators.

Supercommunicators was produced by Derek John and Sophie Summergrad.

Our technical director is Merritt Jacob.

Joel Meyer is our supervising producer.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Introducing Supercommunicators

Sat, 22 Feb 2025 05:01:00 GMT

In a new miniseries inspired by Charles Duhigg’s bestseller, the former host of Slate’s How To! podcast sits down with psychologists, social scientists, and even a Hollywood writer to explore how to ask the right questions, communicate without words, and find meaningful connections in our lives.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring | The Scratch-Off Ticket’s Instant Win

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 08:50:00 GMT

You may never have thought very hard about scratch-off tickets, but that’s part of their power. They’re a form of gambling that’s simply a pedestrian part of American life. But not so long ago, they were risky and innovative, the killer app of their time and the must-play game of the state lottery. In this episode, Ian Coss, host of the new podcast series Scratch & Win, is going to walk us through the history of the scratch-off ticket: its invention, its popularization, and its connection to the explosion in gambling that’s now all around us.

This episode of Decoder Ring was produced by Katie Shepherd. Decoder Ring is also produced by Willa Paskin, Evan Chung and Max Freedman. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

Scratch & Win is a production of GBH News. It is produced by Isabel Hibbard and Ian Coss and edited by Lacy Roberts. Its editorial supervisor is Jenifer McKim with support from Ryan Alderman. Mei Lei is the project manager, and the Executive Producer is Devin Maverick Robins.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at DecoderRing@slate.com. And you can also now call us at our Decoder Ring hotline — that number is 347-460-7281. We love hearing your ideas, and we especially enjoyed all the messages we got about our last episode on the ’90s swing craze. Keep ‘em coming! And even better, tell your friends to check us out.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring | Jump, Jive and Fail: The ’90s Swing Craze

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 08:50:00 GMT

When we recently got a couple of listener emails asking about the swing revival of the late 1990s, host Willa Paskin’s first, knee jerk reaction was just: no. She lived through it, and remembers it as being so incredibly corny and uncool. Insofar as the swing revival persists in the cultural memory, it’s usually as a punchline or as head-scratcher, a particularly odd-seeming fad.

But then we started talking to everyone who was anyone in the swing scene, from Big Bad Voodoo Daddy to the dancers in the infamous Gap khakis commercial. It turns out the 90’s swing revival is more involved, more interesting and, OK, maybe cooler than we ever imagined. It’s about an underground scene that went above ground in a major way, and how that level of success can obscure what’s happening while it’s happening—but also long after it’s over.

This episode was written and produced by Willa Paskin, Evan Chung, and Sofie Kodner with mix help from Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin, Evan Chung, Max Freedman and Katie Shepherd. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

Thank you to listeners Lorraine Denman and Alex Friendly for originally asking us about the ‘90s swing revival.

In this episode, you’ll hear from Mando Dorame, Michael Moss, Scotty Morris, Tom Maxwell, Sylvia Skylar, Christian Perry, Steve Perry, John Bunkley, and Carl Byrd.

Thank you to Kerstin Emhoff, Tom Breihan, Stephanie Landwehr, and Ken Partridge, whose conversation and book Hell of a Hat: The Rise of '90s Ska and Swing was extremely helpful.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring | I am Tupperware, I Contain Multitudes

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 08:00:00 GMT

The storage container is a stealthy star of the modern home. It’s something we use to organize more of our stuff than ever before, and also something other people use to organize their stuff for our viewing pleasure. Its role as a source of soothing, satisfying, potentially viral clicks is new, but storage container innovations are not – something we had occasion to remember when Tupperware, the company, recently filed for bankruptcy. Tupperware was the original container craze. In today’s episode we’re going to connect it to the contemporary one, because as it happens, for a long time now, we’ve been filling empty plastic boxes with far more than just leftovers.

This episode was reported and produced by Olivia Briley. It was edited by Willa Paskin. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin, Evan Chung, Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

In this episode, you’ll hear from Amanda Mull who wrote the articles “Tupperware Is in Trouble” and “Home Influencers Will Not Rest Until Everything Has Been Put in a Clear Plastic Storage Bin.” And from Bob Kealing, the author of Tupperware Unsealed Brownie Wise, Earl Tupper, and the Home Party Pioneers.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Introducing Planet Money: Can Money Buy Happiness?

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 09:00:00 GMT

People often say that money can't buy you happiness. Sometimes, if you ask them to tell you more about it, they'll mention a famous 2010 study by Nobel Prize winners Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton. That study found that higher household income correlates with greater emotional well-being, but only up to around $75,000 a year. After that, more money didn't seem to matter.

This was a famous study by two famous academics. The result stood for over a decade. And it feels good, right? Maybe the rich aren't so much happier than anyone else. But researchers have recently done a complete 180 on this idea. In 2021, psychologist Matt Killingsworth found nearly the opposite: That more money does correlate with more happiness. And that the relationship continues well beyond $75,000 per year.

Today on the show: Does more money mean fewer problems? Two researchers with totally different takes come together to hammer out a better understanding of the relationship between money and happiness.

This episode was hosted by Sally Helm and Nick Fountain. It was produced by Sean Saldana, Sam Yellowhorse Kesler, and Emma Peaslee. It was edited by Meg Cramer and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Engineering by Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring | Mailbag: Fruit Snacks, Waterbeds, and Lobster Tanks

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 08:50:00 GMT

It’s our annual mailbag episode! We get a lot of wonderful reader emails suggesting topics for the show — and at the end of the year we try to answer some of them. This year, we’re tackling four fascinating questions. Why do grocery stores keep live lobsters in tanks, unlike any other animal? How did candy get rebranded as “fruit snacks” when fruit is already a snack? Whatever happened to perfumed ads in magazines? And what was the waterbed all about? We’ll get an answer from the waterbed’s inventor who still has four of them.

You’ll hear from Ray Shalhoub of Joray Fruit Rolls, consumer lawyer Steve Gardner, Jessica Murphy, aka the “Perfume Professor,” inventor Charlie Hall, restaurant historian Jan Whitaker, and the CEO of Crustacean Compassion, Dr. Ben Sturgeon.

This episode was produced by Max Freedman and Sofie Kodner. Decoder Ring is also produced by Willa Paskin, Evan Chung, and Katie Shepherd. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com.

Disclosure in Podcast Description: A Bond Account is a self-directed brokerage account with Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Deposits into this account are used to purchase 10 investment-grade and high-yield bonds. As of 9/26/24, the average, annualized yield to worst (YTW) across the Bond Account is greater than 6%. A bond’s yield is a function of its market price, which can fluctuate; therefore, a bond’s YTW is not “locked in” until the bond is purchased, and your yield at time of purchase may be different from the yield shown here. The “locked in” YTW is not guaranteed; you may receive less than the YTW of the bonds in the Bond Account if you sell any of the bonds before maturity or if the issuer defaults on the bond. Public Investing charges a markup on each bond trade. See our Fee Schedule. Bond Accounts are not recommendations of individual bonds or default allocations. The bonds in the Bond Account have not been selected based on your needs or risk profile. See https://public.com/disclosures/bond-account to learn more.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Introducing SNAFU with Ed Helms

Wed, 11 Dec 2024 21:00:26 GMT

While the Slow Burn team is hard at work on our next season, we are excited to share the first episode of the second season from our friends at SNAFU with Ed Helms: MEDBURG.

In March 1971, Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger receives a mysterious envelope full of classified documents. Soon, what's inside will change the way America sees the FBI.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring | Mystery of the Mullet (Encore)

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 08:00:00 GMT

The mullet, the love-to-hate-it hairstyle, is as associated with the 1980’s as Ronald Reagan, junk bonds, and breakdancing. But in at least one major way, we are suffering from a collective case of false memory syndrome. In this episode we track the rise and fall of the mullet, and also the lexical quandary at its heart: Who named the mullet? We learn how David Bowie, hockey players, the Oxford English Dictionary, the Beastie Boys, a mysterious Reddit user named Topsmate, and a group called Annoy Club all played a part in the strange history of the mullet.

Some of the voices you’ll hear in this episode include proud mullet-wearer Lauren Wright, amateur mullet-sleuth Oskar Sigvardsson, writer, market researcher, and 1980’s hockey teenager John Warner, head of product for Oxford Languages Katherine Connor Martin, and novelist and Grand Royal contributor Warren Fahy.

This episode was produced by Willa Paskin and Benjamin Frisch.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: Reconsidering One of the “Worst” TV Shows of All Time

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 08:00:00 GMT

In 1980, a variety show debuted on NBC called Pink Lady and Jeff. Its stars were a pair of Japanese pop idols known for catchy, choreographed dance numbers. Pink Lady was inescapable in Japan: selling millions of records, appearing on TV daily, and filling arenas. But their American TV show left audiences completely bewildered. Pink Lady and Jeff acquired legendary status as one of television’s most notorious bombs, a show that managed to kill off the entire variety show genre. Or at least—that’s how it’s been seen in America. But for the two women of Pink Lady, the show was something else. In this episode, Decoder Ring’s Evan Chung puts this so-called “megaflop” in the spotlight to find out what really went wrong.

You’ll hear from Mie and Keiko Masuda of Pink Lady, their co-host Jeff Altman, head writer Mark Evanier, and legendary TV producer Sid Krofft of H.R. Pufnstuf fame.

This episode was written and produced by Evan Chung. It was edited by Willa Paskin. Our translator was Eric Margolis. Decoder Ring is also produced by Max Freedman and Katie Shepherd, with help from Sofie Kodner. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

Special thanks to Kelly Killian, Lorne Frohman, Rowby Goren, Michael Lloyd, Cheyna Roth, Karin Fjellman, Cole delCharco, and Hannah Airriess.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com

Disclosure: A Bond Account is a self-directed brokerage account with Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Deposits into this account are used to purchase 10 investment-grade and high-yield bonds. As of 9/26/24, the average, annualized yield to worst (YTW) across the Bond Account is greater than 6%. A bond’s yield is a function of its market price, which can fluctuate; therefore, a bond’s YTW is not “locked in” until the bond is purchased, and your yield at time of purchase may be different from the yield shown here. The “locked in” YTW is not guaranteed; you may receive less than the YTW of the bonds in the Bond Account if you sell any of the bonds before maturity or if the issuer defaults on the bond. Public Investing charges a markup on each bond trade. See our Fee Schedule. Bond Accounts are not recommendations of individual bonds or default allocations. The bonds in the Bond Account have not been selected based on your needs or risk profile. See https://public.com/disclosures/bond-account to learn more.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: A Feel-Good Story About the End of the World

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 07:00:00 GMT

The fear that the Earth could be destroyed by a killer asteroid is an anxiety that pops up all the time in fiction and is grounded in fact. But funnily enough—actually being pancaked by a giant space rock? Not something you need to spend a whole lot of time worrying about! And that’s because a bunch of NASA scientists and engineers are already worried about it for us. In this episode, science journalist Dr. Robin George Andrews tells us the story of NASA’s first-ever mission to defend the planet, which is the subject of his new book, How to Kill an Asteroid.

This episode was written and produced by Sofie Kodner. It was edited by Willa Paskin and Evan Chung. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin, Evan Chung, Max Freedman and Katie Shepherd, with help from Sofie Kodner. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: The Wrongest Bird in Movie History

Thu, 07 Nov 2024 08:00:00 GMT

There is a prominent bird in the 2000 film Charlie’s Angels that makes absolutely no sense. This so-called Pygmy Nuthatch doesn’t look or sound like it should, or live where the characters say it does. The bird is so elaborately wrong that it has haunted the birding community, including Slate’s very own Forrest Wickman, for almost a quarter of a century. In this episode, Forrest embarks on a wild goose chase: Why can’t hundreds of filmmaking professionals with a $100 million budget accurately portray a single bird?

This episode was reported and written by Forrest Wickman. It was edited by Willa Paskin. It was produced by Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin, Evan Chung, Katie Shepherd, and Max Freedman with help from Sofie Kodner. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

In this episode, you’ll hear from Charlie’s Angels screenwriters John August and Zak Penn, director McG, animal trainer Guin Dill, and sound editor Michael Benavente; and bird experts Nick Lund, Nathan Pieplow, and Drew Weber.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: Selling Out (Encore)

Mon, 04 Nov 2024 17:53:38 GMT

Whatever happened to selling out? The defining concern of Generation X has become a relic from another era. How that happened is best illustrated by one of the idea’s last gasps, when in 2001, Oprah Winfrey invited author Jonathan Franzen to come on her show to discuss his new novel The Corrections. A month later, she withdrew the invitation, kicking off a media firestorm.

The Oprah-Franzen Book Club Dust-Up of 2001 was a moment when two ways of thinking about selling out smashed into each other, and one of them—the one that was on its way out already—crashed and burned in public, seldom to be seen again.

Some of the voices you’ll hear in this episode include screenwriter Helen Childress; writer and musician Franz Nicolay; New York Times critic Wesley Morris, Oprah producer Alice McGee; Boris Kachka, author of Hothouse: The Art of Survival and the Survival of Art at America’s Most Celebrated Publishing House, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; Bethany Klein, author of Selling Out: Culture, Commerce and Popular Music; and Laura Miller, Slate’s book critic.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin and produced by Benjamin Frisch. It was edited by Benjamin Frisch and Gabriel Roth. Cleo Levin was our research assistant.

Decoder Ring is produced by Evan Chung, Katie Shepherd, and Max Freedman, with help from Sofie Kodner. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

If you’re a fan of the show, please sign up for Slate Plus. Members get to listen to Decoder Ring and all other Slate podcasts without any ads and have total access to Slate’s website. Your support is also crucial to our work. Go to slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: Calling Dick Tracy! It’s Warren Beatty Again

Wed, 30 Oct 2024 20:45:37 GMT

(While we work on the next season of Slow Burn we're showcasing new episodes from Slate's narrative podcast Decoder Ring.)

Oscar-winner Warren Beatty first secured the rights to the comic book character Dick Tracy in the lead up to his 1990 movie adaptation. Decades later, Beatty kept playing Tracy in bizarre late-night specials airing on cable TV, that confounded nearly everyone. Why is one of the most famous movie stars of the 20th century, spending the twilight of his career playing a comic strip detective of dwindling renown? In this episode, we investigate: What’s going on between Warren Beatty and Dick Tracy?

This episode was written by Willa Paskin. It was edited by Lacy Roberts and Evan Chung. It was produced by Sofie Kodner. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin, Evan Chung, Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

In this episode, you’ll hear from author and artist Ryan Estrada, journalist Kim Masters, comic book store owner Matt Live, and media lawyer Celia Muller.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Rise of Fox News | 6. What Hath We Wrought?

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 07:00:00 GMT

The 2004 presidential race would be the first fully Fox News election—a contest that was framed by Fox, and fought on its terms. But the fight over Fox News was about more than just partisan politics. It also launched covert ops against reporters and let loose a secret army of online trolls. And when a Fox producer made serious allegations against Bill O’Reilly, the network showed just how far it would go to defend its biggest star—no matter the cost.

To read our full reporting on the most recent legal actions between Bill O'Reilly and Andrea Mackris, and learn more about how a non-disclosure agreement from two decades ago has kept Mackris silent, go to slate.com/foxnda.

Want more from Slow Burn? Join Slate Plus to unlock full access to all seasons, including members-only bonus episodes from The Rise of Fox News. You'll also enjoy ad-free listening to all of your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now by clicking "Try Free" at the top of the Slow Burn show page on Apple Podcasts. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen.

Season 10 of Slow Burn was written and reported by Josh Levin. It was executive produced by Lizzie Jacobs.

Slow Burn is produced by Sophie Summergrad, Joel Meyer, and Rosie Belson with help from Patrick Fort, Jacob Fenston, and Julia Russo.

Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

This season was edited by Susan Matthews and Hillary Frey.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. Mix and sound design by Joe Plourde.

Our theme music was composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Derreck Johnson created the artwork for this season. Episode artwork by Ivylise Simones.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Rise of Fox News | 5. Ludacris Has Been Fired

Wed, 16 Oct 2024 07:00:00 GMT

As Fox News gathered strength, progressive activists turned to comedian Al Franken and fledgling online communities to punch back. But could the left put up a real fight without a Fox News of its own? And what did Fox’s critics miss when they focused only on its politics?

Season 10 of Slow Burn was written and reported by Josh Levin. It was executive produced by Lizzie Jacobs.

Slow Burn is produced by Sophie Summergrad, Joel Meyer, and Rosie Belson with help from Patrick Fort, Jacob Fenston, and Julia Russo.

Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

This season was edited by Susan Matthews and Hillary Frey.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. Mix and sound design by Joe Plourde.

Our theme music was composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Derreck Johnson created the artwork for this season. Episode artwork by Ivylise Simones.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Rise of Fox News | 4. Beacon of Truth

Wed, 09 Oct 2024 07:00:00 GMT

After 9/11, the Fox News Channel rallied a huge portion of the country around the Bush administration’s vision of the world. But as the U.S. marched to war in the Middle East, journalists, liberal watchdogs, and comedians began pushing back. Could The Daily Show, Fox News’ own liberal pundits, or an employee-turned-whistleblower take Fox down a peg?

Season 10 of Slow Burn was written and reported by Josh Levin. It was executive produced by Lizzie Jacobs.

Slow Burn is produced by Sophie Summergrad, Joel Meyer, and Rosie Belson with help from Patrick Fort, Jacob Fenston, and Julia Russo.

Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

This season was edited by Susan Matthews and Hillary Frey.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. Mix and sound design by Joe Plourde.

Our theme music was composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Derreck Johnson created the artwork for this season. Episode artwork by Ivylise Simones.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Rise of Fox News | 3. The Other Guy’s Hamburger

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 07:00:00 GMT

For a decade and a half, CNN was peerless and ambitious, and it understood its place in the world. At least, it thought it did—until Fox News burst onto television screens. Could CNN save itself by becoming conservative or by going tabloid? And how would CNN and Fox respond when September 11 made the news more important than ever?

Season 10 of Slow Burn was written and reported by Josh Levin. It was executive produced by Lizzie Jacobs.

Slow Burn is produced by Sophie Summergrad, Joel Meyer, and Rosie Belson with help from Patrick Fort, Jacob Fenston, and Julia Russo.

Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

This season was edited by Susan Matthews and Hillary Frey.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. Mix and sound design by Joe Plourde.

Our theme music was composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Derreck Johnson created the artwork for this season. Episode artwork by Ivylise Simones.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Rise of Fox News | 2. A Network for Normal People

Wed, 25 Sep 2024 07:00:00 GMT

Before he ran Fox News, Roger Ailes launched a very different kind of channel. America’s Talking was his vision of the future of television: a strange, slapdash, mostly apolitical cable network. When that dream got snatched away from him, Ailes went on a revenge mission—and made a connection with Rupert Murdoch.

Season 10 of Slow Burn was written and reported by Josh Levin. It was executive produced by Lizzie Jacobs.

Slow Burn is produced by Sophie Summergrad, Joel Meyer, and Rosie Belson with help from Patrick Fort, Jacob Fenston, and Julia Russo.

Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

This season was edited by Susan Matthews and Hillary Frey.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. Mix and sound design by Joe Plourde.

Our theme music was composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Derreck Johnson created the artwork for this season. Episode artwork by Ivylise Simones.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Rise of Fox News | 1. We Report. You Can Suck It.

Wed, 18 Sep 2024 07:00:00 GMT

When the Fox News Channel launched in 1996, critics called it disorganized, incompetent, and laughably inept. But it wouldn’t be a joke for long. During the 2000 election, Fox News would captivate the nation – and just maybe change the fate of American democracy.

Season 10 of Slow Burn was written and reported by Josh Levin. It was executive produced by Lizzie Jacobs.

Slow Burn is produced by Sophie Summergrad, Joel Meyer, and Rosie Belson with help from Patrick Fort, Jacob Fenston, and Julia Russo.

Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

This season was edited by Susan Matthews and Hillary Frey.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. Mix and sound design by Joe Plourde.

Our theme music was composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Derreck Johnson created the artwork for this season. Episode artwork by Ivylise Simones.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: If You Give a Mouse a Cookie… Will He Want a Welfare Check?

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 07:00:00 GMT

Adults have a long history of trying to find morals and lessons in children’s literature. But what happens when a seemingly innocent book about a boy and a hungry mouse becomes fodder for the culture wars? Over the last decade, Laura Joffe Numeroff’s If You Give a Mouse a Cookie has been adopted by some on the right as a cautionary tale about government welfare. In this episode, we explore the origins of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, the history of adults extracting unintended meaning from children’s books, and try to figure out how this particular kid’s book became a Republican battle cry.

This episode was written by Cheyna Roth. It was edited by Katie Shepherd and Evan Chung. It was produced by Sofie Kodner. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin, Evan Chung, Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

In this episode, you’ll hear from author Laura Numeroff, book critic Bruce Handy, economist Rebecca Christie and former journalist Max Ehrenfreund.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com

If you haven’t please yet, subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

If you’re a fan of the show, we’d love for you to sign up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get to listen to Decoder Ring and every other Slate podcast without any ads. You also get unlimited access to Slate’s website. Member support is crucial to our work. So please go to slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.

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Season 10 Trailer: The Rise of Fox News

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 13:30:00 GMT

In Slow Burn’s 10th season, host Josh Levin takes you back to a crucial inflection point in American history: the moment between 2000 and 2004 when Fox News first surged to power and a whole bunch of people rose up to try and stop it. You’ll hear from the hosts, reporters, and producers who built Fox News, many who’ve never spoken publicly. You’ll also hear from Fox’s biggest antagonists—the political operatives, journalists, and comedians who attacked it, investigated it, and tried to mock it into submission. And you’ll hear from Fox’s victims, who are still coming to terms with how a cable news channel upended their lives.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: Chuck E. Cheese Pizza War (Encore)

Wed, 28 Aug 2024 07:00:00 GMT

In the late 1970s, a new and unusual concept for a restaurant chain emerged in California—video games plus bad pizza plus animatronic characters. The result was Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre, an immensely popular chain with a pizza rat for a mascot. But the strangeness only starts there. Decoder Ring dives into the formation of Chuck E. Cheese’s and its rival, ShowBiz Pizza Place; the conflict between the two; and the odd personalities of the mechanical animatronics that inhabited both stores and are still beloved by a select group of adults to this very day.

This podcast was written by Willa Paskin and was produced and edited by Benjamin Frisch, who also did illustrations for this episode. Cleo Levin was our research assistant.

Decoder Ring is produced by Katie Shepherd, Max Freedman, and Evan Chung, with help from Sofie Kodner. Derek John is executive producer. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: The Hysteria Over Mass Hysteria

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 07:00:00 GMT

“Hysteria” is an ancient word carrying thousands of years of baggage. Though the terminology has changed, hysteria has not gone away, and in its most baffling instances it can even be contagious. The idea of a mass psychogenic illness can be hard to wrap your head around. A group of people begins experiencing physical symptoms, because of something that started in one of their minds? In today’s episode Dan Taberski, the host of Hysterical, a new podcast about mass hysteria, walks us through the past and present of this phenomenon, why it’s so stigmatized, and why it shouldn’t be.

This episode was written by Evan Chung and Willa Paskin and produced by Evan. We produce Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman and with help from Sofie Kodner. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Special thanks to Marialexa Kavanaugh and Alexandra Anderson.

If you haven’t please yet, subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: Standing Up for Sitting Down

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 07:00:00 GMT

If you’re lucky, it’s possible you’ve never thought much about sitting. It’s just something your body does, like breathing or sleeping. But in the last decade or so, sitting has stepped into the spotlight, as a kind of villain. In today’s episode, Slate’s Dan Kois tells us about his radical experiment to go without sitting for an entire month. Then to understand why sitting is under attack we look back at an earlier posture panic around slouching, and explore the role of hostile architecture.

This episode was written by Max Freedman and Willa Paskin and produced by Max. We produce Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd and Evan Chung. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

You heard “Sitting” by TJ Mack, aka Brian Jordan Alvarez, as remixed by Josh Mac. You also heard from Beth Linker and Jonathan Pacheco Bell. We’d like to thank Stephen Nessen and Rob Robinson. For some of the background on hostile architecture, we are indebted to the late Mike Davis’s book, City of Quartz, and in particular Chapter 4: “Fortress L.A.” Check out Dan Kois’ New York Magazine article about his exploits, “Sitting Is Bad for You. So I Stopped. For a Whole Month.”

If you haven’t please yet, subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

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Gays Against Briggs | The Story Behind Our Cover Art

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 20:40:12 GMT

In this special bonus episode host Christina Cauterucci interviews Silvana Nova and Larry Hermsen. Silvana is the person you see raising a fist on this season’s cover art — and Larry is the one who made the photo in 1978. We hear about how they turned it into a poster to raise money to fight the Briggs Initiative, and how gender non-conforming gays like Silvana and Larry (aka "street queens") had their own flourishing culture in San Francisco outside the mainstream gay scene.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: The Secret Life of Lawn Ornaments

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 07:00:00 GMT

Lawn ornaments are everywhere—but for something so ubiquitous, they’re also mysterious. What’s the person with the flamingo or the gargoyle in their yard trying to say—and why do they want to say it so publicly? From the garden-variety to the not so common, the adorable to the odious—lawn ornaments speak volumes, without saying a word. In this episode, we travel from Germany to England and back home to look at the history and meaning behind three specific lawn ornaments: the garden gnome, the lawn jockey, and the 18th century ornamental hermit.

You’ll hear from historian Twigs Way, Sven Berrar of the Zwergstatt Gräfenroda, David Pilgrim of the Jim Crow Museum, Kenneth Goings who is an emeritus professor at the Ohio State University, and art historian Ned Harwood.

This episode was written by Evan Chung and Willa Paskin. It was produced by Evan Chung. We produce Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman. We had additional production from Cheyna Roth and Martina Weber. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

Thank you to Friedemann Brenneis, Heather Joseph-Witham, and Elise Gramza.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com.

If you love the show and want to support us, consider joining Slate Plus. With Slate Plus you get ad-free podcasts, bonus episodes, and total access to all of Slate’s journalism.

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Gays Against Briggs | Tribeca Festival Live Show

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 07:00:00 GMT

Listen in as host Christina Cauterucci joins special guests, Eric Marcus, host of Making Gay History, DeRay Mckesson, activist and host of Pod Save the People, filmmaker Sam Feder, and Esther Fallick, comedian, singer and musical theater writer, for an exclusive live taping at the 2024 Tribeca Festival.

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Gays Against Briggs | 7. Turn Around. Fight Back.

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 07:00:00 GMT

For the two years leading up to May 21, 1979, gay activists followed the rules. They engaged in civil debates. They sought justice at the ballot box. They peacefully mourned the assassination of Harvey Milk. But the verdict in Dan White’s murder trial changed everything.

(If you—or anyone you know—are in crisis, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, anytime: Dial 988 or visit 988lifeline.org.)

Season 9 of Slow Burn was written and produced by Christina Cauterucci. Slow Burn is produced by Sophie Summergrad, Kelly Jones, and Joel Meyer.

Josh Levin is the editorial director of Slow Burn.

Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

Susan Matthews is Slate’s executive editor.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. We had engineering help from Patrick Fort and Madeline Ducharme.

Our theme music is composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Artwork by Ivylise Simones, based on an image of Silvana Nova and a poster designed by Larry Hermsen and the Too Much Graphics Collective.

Join host Christina Cauterucci and special guests as they record a special, live episode of Slow Burn at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 13.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gays Against Briggs | 6. The Murders at City Hall

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 07:00:00 GMT

On election night in 1978, gays and lesbians in California braced themselves for the statewide vote on Proposition 6. Less than a month after the results came in, a pair of killings shocked San Francisco and the nation.

Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately unlock all episodes of Slow Burn: Gays Against Briggs. Your subscription also gets you ad-free access to all your favorite Slate podcasts, plus other member exclusive content. Join now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Subscribe” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen.

Season 9 of Slow Burn was written and produced by Christina Cauterucci. Slow Burn is produced by Sophie Summergrad, Kelly Jones, and Joel Meyer.

Josh Levin is the editorial director of Slow Burn.

Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

Susan Matthews is Slate’s executive editor.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. We had engineering help from Patrick Fort and Madeline Ducharme.

Our theme music is composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Artwork by Ivylise Simones, based on an image of Silvana Nova and a poster designed by Larry Hermsen and the Too Much Graphics Collective.

Join host Christina Cauterucci and special guests as they record a special, live episode of Slow Burn at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 13.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gays Against Briggs | 5. Strange Bedfellows

Wed, 19 Jun 2024 07:00:00 GMT

As Election Day approached, the campaign to defeat Proposition 6 faced formidable odds. John Briggs’ fundraising juggernaut was churning out cash, and public opinion polls were solidly in his favor. To turn the tide, gay rights activists unveiled a powerful symbol and gambled on the support of an improbable ally: Ronald Reagan.

(If you—or anyone you know—are in crisis, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, anytime: Dial 988 or visit 988lifeline.org.)

Season 9 of Slow Burn was written and produced by Christina Cauterucci. Slow Burn is produced by Joel Meyer, Sophie Summergrad, and Kelly Jones.

Josh Levin is the editorial director of Slow Burn.

Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

Susan Matthews is Slate’s executive editor.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. We had engineering help from Patrick Fort and Madeline Ducharme.

Our theme music is composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Artwork by Ivylise Simones, based on an image of Silvana Nova and a poster designed by Larry Hermsen and the Too Much Graphics Collective.

Join host Christina Cauterucci and special guests as they record a special, live episode of Slow Burn at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 13.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gays Against Briggs | 4. You Must Come Out

Wed, 12 Jun 2024 07:00:00 GMT

In the early days of the anti-Briggs campaign, a Richard Pryor comedy set turned into a public fiasco and laid bare longstanding divisions in the gay community. With the movement low on cash and running out of time, thousands of gay Californians decided their only option was to tell the world who they really were.

(If you—or anyone you know—are in crisis, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, anytime: Dial 988 or visit 988lifeline.org.)

Season 9 of Slow Burn was written and produced by Christina Cauterucci. Slow Burn is produced by Kelly Jones, Joel Meyer, and Sophie Summergrad.

Josh Levin is the editorial director of Slow Burn.

Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

Susan Matthews is Slate’s executive editor.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. We had engineering help from Patrick Fort and Madeline Ducharme.

Our theme music is composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Artwork by Ivylise Simones, based on an image of Silvana Nova and a poster designed by Larry Hermsen and the Too Much Graphics Collective.

Join host Christina Cauterucci and special guests as they record a special, live episode of Slow Burn at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 13.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gays Against Briggs | 3. Harvey Milk vs. the Machine

Wed, 05 Jun 2024 07:00:00 GMT

After decades of wandering and job-hopping, Harvey Milk found his purpose as a gay community leader with growing political ambitions. But his historic election was just the beginning. As John Briggs’ gay teacher ban gained momentum, it was up to Supervisor Milk and his allies to figure out how to stop him.

Season 9 of Slow Burn was written and produced by Christina Cauterucci. Slow Burn is produced by Joel Meyer, Sophie Summergrad, and Kelly Jones.

Josh Levin is the editorial director of Slow Burn.

Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

Susan Matthews is Slate’s executive editor.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. We had engineering help from Patrick Fort and Madeline Ducharme.

Our theme music is composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Artwork by Ivylise Simones, based on an image of Silvana Nova and a poster designed by Larry Hermsen and the Too Much Graphics Collective.

Join host Christina Cauterucci and special guests as they record a special, live episode of Slow Burn at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 13.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gays Against Briggs | 2. Defend Our Children

Wed, 29 May 2024 07:00:00 GMT

In 1977, John Briggs was a small-time state senator with big dreams. But Briggs’ plan to ban gay and lesbian teachers from California schools changed the arc of his life and career. Suddenly, he was a right-wing hero, and a villain of the gay rights movement. And his message seemed to be catching on all over the country.

Season 9 of Slow Burn was written and produced by Christina Cauterucci. Slow Burn is produced by Kelly Jones, Joel Meyer, and Sophie Summergrad.

Josh Levin is the editorial director of Slow Burn.

Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

Susan Matthews is Slate’s executive editor.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. We had engineering help from Patrick Fort and Madeline Ducharme.

Our theme music is composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Artwork by Ivylise Simones, based on an image of Silvana Nova and a poster designed by Larry Hermsen and the Too Much Graphics Collective.

Join host Christina Cauterucci and special guests as they record a special, live episode of Slow Burn at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 13.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gays Against Briggs | 1. A Hotbed of Homosexuality

Wed, 22 May 2024 07:00:00 GMT

In the 1970s, San Francisco became a welcoming home for tens of thousands of new gay residents—and a modern-day Sodom for the American right. With a moral panic sweeping across the United States, a Florida orange juice spokeswoman inspired an ambitious California politician to launch his own campaign against lesbians and gays—one that would change the course of U.S. history.

(If you—or anyone you know—are in crisis, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, anytime: Dial 988 or visit 988lifeline.org.)

Season 9 of Slow Burn was written and produced by Christina Cauterucci. Slow Burn is produced by Sophie Summergrad, Kelly Jones, and Joel Meyer.

Josh Levin is the editorial director of Slow Burn.

Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

Susan Matthews is Slate’s executive editor.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. We had engineering help from Patrick Fort and Madeline Ducharme.

Our theme music is composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Artwork by Ivylise Simones, based on an image of Silvana Nova and a poster designed by Larry Hermsen and the Too Much Graphics Collective.

Join host Christina Cauterucci and special guests as they record a special, live episode of Slow Burn at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 13.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Season 9 Trailer: Gays Against Briggs

Thu, 09 May 2024 07:00:00 GMT

In 1978, state senator John Briggs put a bold proposition on the California ballot. If it passed, the Briggs Initiative would ban gays and lesbians from working in public schools—and fuel a growing backlash against LGBTQ+ people in all corners of American life.

In the ninth season of Slate’s Slow Burn, host Christina Cauterucci explores one of the most consequential civil rights battles in American history: the first-ever statewide vote on gay rights. With that fight looming, young gay activists formed a sprawling, infighting, joyous opposition; confronted the smear that they were indoctrinating kids; and came out en masse to show Briggs—and their own communities—who they really were. And when an unthinkable act of violence shocked them all, they showed the world what gay power looked like.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: How the Jalapeño Lost Its Heat

Wed, 08 May 2024 07:00:00 GMT

The jalapeño is the workhorse of hot peppers. They’re sold fresh, canned, pickled, in hot sauces, salsas, smoked into chipotles, and they outsell all other hot peppers in the United States. These everyday chilies are a scientific and sociological marvel, and tell a complicated story about Mexican food and American palates.

In today’s episode, we meet Dallas-based food critic Brian Reinhart, who fell in love with spicy Mexican cuisine as a teenager. Recently, Brian started to notice that the jalapeños he’d buy in the grocery store were less and less hot. So he called up an expert: Dr. Stephanie Walker, who studies chili pepper genetics at New Mexico State University. She explains that the food industry has been breeding milder jalapeños for decades – a project led by “Dr. Pepper” himself, Benigno Villalon.

Finally, Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano puts the jalapeño in context, as part of an age-old cycle in Americans’ obsession with Mexican food: one more ingredient that’s been “discovered,” celebrated, then domesticated.

Brian Reinhart’s article about the jalapeño ran in D Magazine. Gustavo Arellano’s book is called Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.

This episode was produced by Evan Chung, who produces the show with Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: Making Real Music for a Fake Band

Wed, 24 Apr 2024 07:00:00 GMT

Pop culture is full of fictional bands singing songs purpose-made to capture a moment, a sound. This music doesn’t organically emerge from a scene or genre, hoping to find an audience. Instead it fulfills an assignment: it needs to be 1960s folk music, 1970s guitar rock, 80s hair metal, 90s gangsta rap, and on and on.

In this episode, we’re going to use ‘Stereophonic,’ which just opened on Broadway, as a kind of case study in how to construct songs like this. The playwright David Adjmi and his collaborator, Will Butler formerly of the band Arcade Fire, will walk us through how they did it. How they made music that needs to capture the past, but wants to speak to the present; that has to work dramatically but hopes to stand on its own; that must be plausible, but aspires to be something even more.

The band in Stereophonic includes Sarah Pidgeon, Tom Pecinka, Juliana Canfield, Will Brill, and Chris Stack. Stereophonic is now playing on Broadway—and the cast album will be out May 10.

Thank you to Daniel Aukin, Marie Bshara, and Blake Zidell and Nate Sloan.

This episode was produced by Max Freedman and edited by Evan Chung, who produce the show with Katie Shepherd. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: Can the “Bookazine” Save Magazines?

Wed, 10 Apr 2024 07:00:00 GMT

Magazines have fallen on hard times – especially the weekly news, fashion, and celebrity mags that once dominated newsstands. The revenue from magazine racks has plummeted in recent years, and many magazines have stopped appearing in print or shut down altogether.

And yet, there is something growing in the checkout aisle: one-off publications, each devoted to a single topic, known as “bookazines.” Last year, over 1,200 different bookazines went on sale across the country. They cover topics ranging from Taylor Swift, Star Wars, the Kennedy assassination, K-pop, the British royal family, and as host Willa Paskin recently observed, the career of retired movie star Robert Redford.

In today’s episode, Willa looks behind the racks to investigate this new-ish format. Who is writing, publishing, and reading all these one-off magazines – and why? Is the bookazine a way forward for magazines, or their last gasp?

Voices you’ll hear in this episode include Caragh Donley, longtime magazine journalist turned prolific writer of bookazines; Eric Szegda, executive at bookazine publisher a360 media; and Erik Radvon, comic book creator and bookazine fan.

This episode was produced by Max Freedman and edited by Evan Chung, who produce the show with Katie Shepherd. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: Andrew Wyeth's Secret Nudes (Encore)

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT

In 1986, Andrew Wyeth was the most famous painter in America. He was a household name, on the cover of magazines and tapped to paint presidents. And then he revealed a secret cache of 240 pieces of artwork, many provocative, all featuring the same nude female model. This collection, called The Helga Pictures, had been completed over 15 years and hidden from his wife, until they were revealed and wound up on the covers of both Time Magazine and Newsweek. The implication of these paintings were clear: Wyeth must have been having an affair, but then the story got complicated. Was it a genuine sex scandal? A hoax? Or something else entirely?

Some of the voices you’ll hear in this episode include Doug McGill, former New York Times reporter; Neil Harris, author of Capital Culture: J. Carter Brown, the National Gallery of Art, and the Reinvention of the Museum Experience; Cathy Booth Thomas, former Time Magazine correspondent; Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw, art historian and curator; Jeannie McDowell, former Time Magazine correspondent; Chris Lione, former art director at Art and Antiques; Joyce Stoner, Wyeth scholar; Peter Ralston, Wyeth photographer and friend; and Jim Duff, former director of the Brandywine River Museum.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin and produced by Willa Paskin and Benjamin Frisch. It was edited by Benjamin Frisch and Gabriel Roth. We had research assistance from Cleo Levin. Decoder Ring is produced by Evan Chung, Katie Shepherd, and Max Freedman. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

A very special thank you to Paula Scaire.

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

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Decoder Ring: Why Stylists Rule the Red Carpet

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 07:00:00 GMT

Like a manager or an agent or a publicist, a stylist has become a kind of must-have accessory for well-dressed, A-list celebrities. It’s just expected that they will have hired someone to select the clothes they’ll wear at public appearances. But this was not always the case.

In today’s episode, Avery Trufelman, host of Articles of Interest, will guide us through the collapse of a certain kind of Hollywood glamor; to the rise of a growing, financially rewarding relationship between fashion designers and celebrity culture; and then onto the explosion in red carpet events patrolled by fashion police that helped create this new occupation.

This episode was produced by Avery Trufelman and Evan Chung, who produces Decoder Ring with Willa Paskin, Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

You’ll hear from Teri Agins, Dana Thomas, Melissa Rivers, and Jeanne Yang.

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: The Gen X Soda That Was Just "OK"

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMT

Thirty years ago, a new kind of soda arrived in select stores. Instead of crowing about how spectacular it was, it offered up a liquid shrug, a fizzy irony. OK Soda was an inside joke for people who knew soda wasn’t cool. But what exactly was the punchline? In today’s episode, we’re going to ask how Coca-Cola, a company predicated on the idea that soda is more than ‘OK,’ ever bankrolled such a project. It was either a corporate attempt to market authenticity or a bold send-up of consumer capitalism; a project that either utterly, predictably failed or, perhaps more surprisingly, almost succeeded.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin. It was edited by Jenny Lawton. It was produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd, along with Evan Chung. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

You’ll hear from Sergio Zyman, Brian Lanahan, Robin Joannides Lanahan, Charlotte Moore, Peter Wegner, Todd Waterbury, Dustin Ness, and Matt Purrington.

Special thanks to David Cowles, Art Chantry, Seth Godin, Jeff Beer, Gabriel Roth, Mark Hensley for all the OK Soda commercials and Mark Pendergrast, whose book For God, Country, & Coca-Cola was indispensable.

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Announcing Slow Burn Season 9

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 19:23:00 GMT

Hosted by Christina Cauterucci. Coming in May 2024.

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Decoder Ring: Why Do So Many Coffee Shops Look the Same?

Wed, 14 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMT

The eerie similarity of coffee shops all over the world was so confounding to Kyle Chayka that it led him to write the new book Filterworld: How Algorithms Are Flattening Culture. In today’s episode, Kyle’s going to walk us through the recent history of the cafe, to help us see how digital behavior is altering a physical space hundreds of years older than the internet itself, and how those changes are happening everywhere—it’s just easier to see them when they’re spelled out in latte art.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin and produced by Katie Shepherd. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin, Katie Shepherd and Evan Chung. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Special thanks to Ben Frisch and Patrick Fort.

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

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One Year: 1990 | 5. The Angry Death of Kimberly Bergalis

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 08:00:00 GMT

Before 1990, there had never been a documented case of a patient getting HIV from a health care worker. Kimberly Bergalis changed that. Her claim that she’d been infected by her dentist would captivate and terrify the country. And the dentist, David Acer, would be made into a villain without America ever knowing who he really was.

This episode was written by Kelly Jones and Josh Levin, One Year’s editorial director. One Year’s senior producer is Evan Chung.

This episode was produced by Kelly Jones and Evan Chung, with additional production by Olivia Briley.

It was edited by Joel Meyer and Derek John, Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is senior technical director. We had mixing help from Kevin Bendis. We had production help this season from Jabari Butler.

Join Slate Plus to get a special behind-the-scenes conversation at the end of our season about how we put together our 1990 stories. Slate Plus members also get to listen to all Slate podcasts without any ads.

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One Year: 1990 | 4. Art on Trial

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 08:00:00 GMT

Robert Mapplethorpe was one of the most famous photographers in the world—and one of the most controversial. When his work came to Cincinnati in 1990, it would be at the center of a vicious fight over obscenity and the First Amendment, one that threatened the future of art in America.

This episode of One Year was written by Evan Chung, One Year's senior producer. It was produced by Kelly Jones and Evan Chung, with additional production by Olivia Briley.

It was edited by Josh Levin, One Year’s editorial director, with Joel Meyer and Derek John, Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

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One Year: 1990 | 3. Bush vs. Broccoli

Thu, 07 Dec 2023 08:00:00 GMT

In March 1990, a story broke that shocked the nation: George H.W. Bush had banned broccoli from Air Force One. The frenzy that came next would change the fate of a vegetable—and maybe even alter the course of a presidency.

This episode was written by Olivia Briley and Josh Levin, One Year’s editorial director. One Year’s senior producer is Evan Chung.

This episode was produced by Olivia Briley and Kelly Jones.

It was edited by Joel Meyer and Evan Chung.

Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

Merritt Jacob is senior technical director.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One Year: 1990 | 2. Mandrake the Magician

Thu, 30 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT

A middle-aged single dad in Chicago was outraged by all the cigarette billboards popping up in Black communities. In 1990, he picked up a paint roller and became an anti-tobacco vigilante. And he did it all under a secret identity.

This episode was written by Josh Levin, One Year’s editorial director. One Year’s senior producer is Evan Chung.

This episode was produced by Kelly Jones, Olivia Briley, and Evan Chung. It was edited by Joel Meyer and Derek John, Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. We had mixing help from Kevin Bendis.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One Year: 1990 | 1. Pizzastroika

Wed, 22 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT

Pizza Hut’s adventure in the Soviet Union was unlike any restaurant opening before or since. It involved a fleet of submarines, a very special pizza topped with tuna and salmon, and a casual dining spot on a mission to change the world.

This episode was written by Kelly Jones and Josh Levin, One Year’s editorial director. One Year’s senior producer is Evan Chung.

This episode was produced by Kelly Jones and Evan Chung, with additional production by Olivia Briley.

It was edited by Joel Meyer and Derek John, Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: The Forgotten Video Game About Slavery

Wed, 15 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT

In 1992, a Minnesota-based software company known for its educational hit The Oregon Trail released another simulation-style game to school districts across the country. Freedom! took kids on a journey along the Underground Railroad, becoming the first American software program to use slavery as its subject matter.

Less than four months later, it was pulled from the market. In this episode, we revisit this well-intentioned, but flawed foray into historical trauma that serves as a reminder that teaching Black history in America has always been fraught.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd. This episode was also produced by Benjamin Frisch, and edited by Erica Morrison. Derek John is executive producer. Joel Meyer is senior editor-producer and Merritt Jacob is senior technical director.

We’re grateful to Julian Lucas for his expertise, reporting, and generosity, without which this episode would not have been possible. His New Yorker article, “Can Slavery Reenactments Set Us Free?,” revisits the Freedom! story as part of an exploration of the live Underground Railroad re-enactments that Kamau Kambui pioneered.

Thank you to Jesse Fuchs for suggesting this topic. Thanks also to Coventry Cowens, Brigitte Fielder, Bob Whitaker, Alan Whisman, Wayne Studer, Alicia Montgomery, Rebecca Onion, Luke Winkie, and Kamau Kambui’s children: Yamro Kambui Fields, Halim Fields, Mawusi Kambui Pierre, Nanyamka Salley, and Kamau Sababu Kambui Jr.

If you haven’t please yet, subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

If you’re a fan of the show, please sign up for Slate Plus. Members get to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads and have total access to Slate’s website. Your support is also crucial to our work. Go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.

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Decoder Ring: The Dating Manual Unlike Any Other

Wed, 08 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT

From the moment it was released in 1995, The Rules was controversial.. Some people loved it—and swore that the dating manual’s throwback advice helped them land a husband. Others thought it was retrograde hogwash that flew in the face of decades of feminist progress. The resulting brouhaha turned the book into a cultural phenomenon. In this episode, Slate’s Heather Schwedel explores where The Rules came from, how it became so popular, and why its list of 35 commandments continue to be so sticky—whether we like it or not.

Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd. This episode was edited by Willa Paskin. Derek John is executive producer. Joel Meyer is senior editor/producer. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

We’d like to to thank Benjamin Frisch, Rachel O'Neill, Penny Love, Heather Fain, Elif Batuman, Laura Banks, Marlene Velasquez-Sedito, Leigh Anderson, Caroline Smith. We also want to mention two sources that were really helpful: Labour of Love by Moira Weigel, a paper called Shrinking Violets and Caspar Milquetoasts by Patricia McDaniel

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

If you’re a fan of the show, we’d love for you to sign up for Slate Plus. Members get to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads. Their support is also crucial to our work. So please go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.

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Decoder Ring: Mailbag - The Recorder, Limos, and “Baby on Board” Signs

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 07:00:00 GMT

We receive a lot of fantastic show ideas from our listeners—and we’re grateful for each and every one. For our latest mailbag episode, we’re tackling five of your questions, including “Why the hell do we teach kids to play the recorder?” (We’re paraphrasing a bit.) Also: We’ll explore the rise and fall of the stretch limo, the incredible versatility of the word “like,” the meaning of the “Baby on Board” sign, and why it took so long to develop luggage with wheels.

Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd. This episode was also produced by Rosemary Belson. Derek John is executive producer. Joel Meyer is senior editor/producer. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

Thank you to every listener who has submitted a suggestion for an episode. We truly appreciate your ideas. We read them all, even if we don’t always respond. Thanks for being a listener and for thinking creatively about this show.

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

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Decoder Ring: When Art Pranksters Invaded Melrose Place

Wed, 25 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT

In the mid-1990s, the prime time drama Melrose Place became a home to hundreds of pieces of contemporary art—and no one noticed. In this episode, Isaac Butler tells the story of the artist collective that smuggled subversive quilts, sperm-shaped pool floats, and dozens of other provocative works onto the set of the hit TV show. The project, In the Name of the Place, inspired a real-life exhibition and tested the ability of mass media to get us to see what’s right in front of our faces.

Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd. This episode was written and reported by Isaac Butler and produced by Benjamin Frisch. Derek John is executive producer. Joel Meyer is senior editor/producer. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

Thank you to Jamie Bennett, JJ Bersch, Mark Flood, and Cynthia Carr, whose book On Edge: Performance at the End of the 20th Century inspired this episode.

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

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Decoder Ring: The Fast Decline of the Slow Dance

Wed, 18 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT

Judging from teen dramas on Netflix, the slow dance seems to be alive and well. But when you talk to actual teens, it’s clear this time-honored tradition is on life support. In this episode, we trace the history of slow dancing from its origins in partner dances like the waltz to the modern “zombie sway” seen at middle-school dances and high-school proms. Plus, former slow dancers offer up stiff-armed, nostalgia-soaked stories about a rite of passage that’s fading fast.

Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd. This episode was edited by Zakiya Gibbons. Derek John is executive producer. Joel Meyer is senior editor/producer. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

Thank you to Benjamin Frisch and Carlos Pareja. Special thanks to everyone who shared their slow dancing stories, including Ralph Giordano, Matt Baume, Meryl Bezrutczyk, Ari Feldman, Ava Candade, Eileen Zheng, and Harper Kois.

Here’s the article by Kyle Denis that we mentioned in the episode: The Death of the Slow Dance? How the One-Time Rite of Passage Has Evolved for Gen Z.

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

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One Year: 1955 | 6. The Hiroshima Maidens

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT

Ten years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, 25 women who’d been disfigured by the blast came to the United States. Those Japanese survivors would go to the White House and end up on a bizarre proto reality TV show. They’d also put their lives in the hands of American doctors, hoping that risky, cutting-edge surgeries might repair their injuries and give them a chance for a fresh start.

Josh Levin is One Year’s editorial director. One Year’s senior producer is Evan Chung.

This episode was produced by Kelly Jones and Evan Chung, with additional production by Sophie Summergrad.

It was edited by Joel Meyer and Derek John, Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. Holly Allen created the artwork for this season.

Join Slate Plus to get a bonus 1955 episode at the end of the season. Slate Plus members also get to listen to all Slate podcasts without any ads. Sign up now to support One Year.

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One Year: 1955 | 5. The Cutter Incident

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 07:00:00 GMT

Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine transformed America and the world in ways that seemed unimaginable. But in 1955, there was a moment when everything was in doubt. This week, Josh Levin talks with Dr. Paul Offit about the medical mystery that threatened to derail one of history’s most important scientific breakthroughs.

Josh Levin is One Year’s editorial director. One Year’s senior producer is Evan Chung.

This episode was produced by Kelly Jones, Evan Chung, and Sophie Summergrad.

It was edited by Josh Levin, Joel Meyer, and Derek John, Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

Join Slate Plus to get a bonus 1955 episode at the end of the season. Slate Plus members also get to listen to all Slate podcasts without any ads. Sign up now to support One Year.

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One Year: 1955 | 4. Siberia, USA

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 07:00:00 GMT

When Alaskans wanted their own mental-health facility, a rumor took hold all over America. This week, Evan Chung traces the origins of that far-right conspiracy theory: that the government was building a concentration camp where Americans would get imprisoned for their political beliefs. Get ready for a strange tale that involves a brainwashing manual, Scientology, and a vast network of Communist-hunting housewives.

Josh Levin is One Year’s editorial director. One Year’s senior producer is Evan Chung.

This episode was produced by Kelly Jones and Evan Chung, with additional production by Sophie Summergrad.

It was edited by Josh Levin, Joel Meyer, and Derek John, Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

Join Slate Plus to get a bonus 1955 story at the end of the season. Slate Plus members also get to listen to all Slate podcasts without any ads. Sign up now to support One Year.

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One Year: 1955 | 3. The Weather Girls

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 07:00:00 GMT

In the early days of television, women struggled to find their place. In 1955, they got it: forecasting the weather, on stations all across the country. But as these “weather girls” transformed the airwaves, a group of powerful men hatched a plan—one that had the potential to push women weathercasters off the air forever.

Josh Levin is One Year’s editorial director. One Year’s senior producer is Evan Chung.

This episode was produced by Kelly Jones and Evan Chung, with additional production by Sophie Summergrad.

It was edited by Joel Meyer and Derek John, Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

Join Slate Plus to get the first three episodes of One Year: 1955 right away—and a bonus 1955 story at the end of the season. Slate Plus members also get to listen to all Slate podcasts without any ads. Sign up now to support One Year.

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One Year: 1955 | 2. The Crockett Craze

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 17:52:00 GMT

In 1955, the frontiersman Davy Crockett became the most famous man in America, more than a century after his death at the Alamo. This week, Evan Chung dives into a cultural phenomenon nobody saw coming. Not the kids in coonskin caps who started the craze, not the parents whose money fueled it, and least of all Walt Disney, the legendary studio head who created it totally by accident.

Josh Levin is One Year’s editorial director. One Year’s senior producer is Evan Chung.

This episode was produced by Kelly Jones and Evan Chung, with additional production by Sophie Summergrad.

It was edited by Joel Meyer and Derek John, Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One Year: 1955 | 1. The Team Nobody Would Play

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 07:00:00 GMT

The Cannon Street All-Stars dreamed of playing in the 1955 Little League World Series. Their biggest obstacle didn’t come on the field. In the year that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a public bus, these Black 12-year-olds became unlikely civil rights pioneers—and faced the wrath of a white society that wasn’t ready to change.

Josh Levin is One Year’s editorial director. One Year’s senior producer is Evan Chung.

This episode was produced by Kelly Jones and Evan Chung, with additional production by Sophie Summergrad.

It was edited by Joel Meyer and Derek John, Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: Think Catchphrases Are Dead? Eat My Shorts.

Wed, 16 Aug 2023 07:00:00 GMT

Once you start listening for catchphrases in everyday life—you can’t stop hearing them. From the radio era’s “Holy mackerel!” to Fonzie’s “Ayyy!” to Urkel’s multiple go-to lines on Family Matters, we explore the irresistible quotables from sitcoms, movies and social media that have burrowed into our collective lexicon. Oh, just one more thing… bazinga! (Did I do that?)

This episode was written by Willa Paskin, who produces Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd. This episode was edited by Joel Meyer. Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

Thank you to Luke Winkie, Stephen Langford, Doug Dietzold and The Good, the Bad and the Sequel podcast, and Shawn Green for the suggestion and Urkel clips.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, you can email us at DecoderRing@slate.com

If you haven’t yet, subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends. If you’re a fan of the show and want to support us, consider signing up for Slate Plus. As a member, you’ll get to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads—and your support is crucial to our work. Go to slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: The Quest for a Homemade Hovercraft

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 07:00:00 GMT

When Slate’s Evan Chung was a kid, he was obsessed with a mysterious advertisement that ran for decades in the scouting magazine Boys’ Life. Under the enticing headline “You Can Float on Air,” the ad assured Evan—and generations of scouts—that a personal hovercraft could be theirs for just a few bucks.

In this episode, the adult version of Evan journeys halfway across the country to wield power tools, summon his latent scouting skills, and conscript his father into a quest three decades in the making.

Will Evan float on air? Scout’s honor: You’ll just have to listen.

This episode was written by Evan Chung, who produced this episode with Decoder Ring’s Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd. It was edited by Willa Paskin and Joel Meyer. Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

If you’re a fan of the show and want to support us, consider signing up for Slate Plus. As a member, you’ll get to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads—and your support is crucial to our work. Go to slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.

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Decoder Ring: A Brief History of Making Out

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 07:00:00 GMT

Kissing—the romantic, sexual, steamy kind—is so ingrained in us that it just seems like a fact of life. Like breathing or eating, we just do it. But what if it’s not like that at all?

In this episode, we’re going to look at passionate kissing, well, dispassionately, not as something instinctual and innate but as a cultural practice. We’re going to backtrack through history in search of the origins of the kiss, with some surprises along the way.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin, who produces Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd. This episode was edited by Andrea Bruce and Joel Meyer. Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

Thank you to Marcel Danesi.

If you’re interested in the papers we mentioned, you can read about Justin Garcia and William Jankowiak’s research, Troels Pank Arbøll and Sophie Lund Rasmussen’s essay, Sabrina Imbler’s When Was the First Sexy Kiss? and the herpes study. (Here’s that bronze-age statue, too!)

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

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Decoder Ring: The Great Parmesan Cheese Debate

Wed, 26 Jul 2023 07:00:00 GMT

Parmesan is a food—but it’s not just a food. Italy’s beloved cheese is often paired with a deep craving for tradition and identity. But its history also involves intrepid immigrants, lucrative businesses and an American version that’s probably available in your local grocery store.

After a notorious debunker of Italian-cuisine myths claims this Wisconsin-made product is the real deal, we embark on a quest to answer the question: Has an Italian delicacy been right under our noses this whole time?

Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin with Katie Shepherd. This episode was written by Willa Paskin and edited by Andrea Bruce. We had production help from Patrick Fort and editing help from Joel Meyer. Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

Thank you to Giacomo Stefanini for translating. Thank you to Fabio Parasecoli, Ken Kane, Thomas McNamee, Dan Weber, Irene Graziosi, James Norton, and Ian MacAllen, whose knowledge and book Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American were very helpful.

You should also read Marianna Giusti’s article in the Financial Times. If you feel like really nerding out, we also recommend the 1948 academic study Italian Cheese Production in the American Dairy Region.

We also included clips in this episode from David Rocco’s YouTube channel about how Parmigiano-Reggiano is made and from Gennaro Contaldo’s YouTube documentary on the same subject.

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

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Decoder Ring: What's Really Going On Inside a Mosh Pit?

Wed, 19 Jul 2023 07:00:00 GMT

The mosh pit has a reputation as a violent place where (mostly) white guys vent their aggression. There’s some truth to that, but it’s also a place bound by camaraderie and—believe it or not—etiquette. In this episode, we explore the unwritten rules of this 50-year-old, live-music phenomenon with punks, concertgoers and a heavy metal physicist.

Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin with Katie Shepherd. This episode was written by Katie Shepherd. This episode was edited by Willa Paskin and Andrea Bruce, with help from Joel Meyer. Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

Thank you to Vivien Goldman, Paolo Ragusa, and Philip Moriarty whose insights and research on moshing were crucial to this episode. You can create your own mosh pit using this simulator developed by Jesse Silverberg and his colleagues.

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

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S8 Live Announcement & Bonus Conversation

Sat, 15 Jul 2023 09:00:00 GMT

Join host Joel Anderson and special guests for Slow Burn: Becoming Justice Thomas LIVE in D.C. (July 25, 2023 at 7:30 p.m.)

You’ll see a live performance of an extended story from the season (spoiler: it will be a…slam dunk). You’ll hear even more insights into Clarence Thomas’ life and career—and his decades-long battle with affirmative action. And you’ll watch as Anderson gets grilled about the making of this season and what it was like to interview Justice Thomas’ mother in his childhood home.

Special guests include Thomas’ college friend Eddie Jenkins; legal scholar and MSNBC commentator Melissa Murray; Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse from the Senate Judiciary Committee, and more. (Slate Plus members will receive a discount off your purchase. Use the discount code found on the Events page in your account.)

In addition, please enjoy this bonus conversation with Joel conducted by Slate's Dahlia Lithwick for the Amicus podcast. Joel talks about Clarence Thomas’ anger issues, and what his mother really thinks of Ginni Thomas.

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Becoming Justice Thomas | 4. A National Disgrace

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 17:45:00 GMT

Anita Hill’s accusations launched urgent and heated conversations about racism and sexual harassment. They also stoked an anger in Clarence Thomas that’s never stopped raging.

Want more Slow Burn? Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately access all episodes of Slow Burn (and your other favorite Slate podcasts) completely ad-free. Plus, you’ll unlock subscriber-exclusive bonus episodes that bring you behind-the-scenes on the making of the show. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen.

Season 8 of Slow Burn is produced by Joel Anderson, Sophie Summergrad, Sam Kim, and Sofie Kodner.

Josh Levin is the editorial director of Slow Burn.

Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

Susan Matthews is Slate’s executive editor.

This episode was edited by Josh Levin, Derek John, Sophie Summergrad, and Joel Meyer.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

Our theme music is composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Artwork by Ivylise Simones.

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Becoming Justice Thomas | 3. I’m Their Guy

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 09:00:00 GMT

When Clarence Thomas got nominated to the Supreme Court, his behavior during the 1980s would get put under a microscope. To understand who Thomas was then and who he is today, you need to hear how he treated the women he worked with. You also need to hear from the woman who knew him best during those critical years: his ex-girlfriend Lillian McEwen.

Season 8 of Slow Burn is produced by Joel Anderson, Sophie Summergrad, Sam Kim, and Sofie Kodner.

Josh Levin is the editorial director of Slow Burn.

Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

Susan Matthews is Slate’s executive editor.

This episode was edited by Josh Levin, Derek John, Sophie Summergrad, and Joel Meyer.

Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

Our theme music is composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Artwork by Ivylise Simones.

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Becoming Justice Thomas | 2. Smiling Faces

Wed, 07 Jun 2023 09:00:00 GMT

Clarence Thomas went to Yale Law School because he thought it was a good fit for his left-wing politics. But when he arrived, it seemed like all the white liberals thought he was only there because he was Black. The sting Thomas felt fueled a lifelong resentment of affirmative action. It also drew him to a group of conservatives who helped sharpen his political beliefs.

Season 8 of Slow Burn is produced by Joel Anderson, Sophie Summergrad, Sam Kim, and Sofie Kodner.

Josh Levin is the editorial director of Slow Burn.

Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

Susan Matthews is Slate’s executive editor.

This episode was edited by Josh Levin, Derek John, Sophie Summergrad and Joel Meyer.

Merritt Jacob is Slate’s senior technical director.

Our theme music is composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Artwork by Ivylise Simones.

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Becoming Justice Thomas | 1. America’s Blackest Child

Wed, 31 May 2023 09:00:00 GMT

Growing up in Georgia, Clarence Thomas wanted to make his mark. His goal was to become his hometown’s first Black Catholic priest. But in the 1960s, he abandoned that dream. Instead, he embraced campus activism and the teachings of Malcolm X.

Season 8 of Slow Burn is produced by Joel Anderson, Sophie Summergrad, Sam Kim, and Sofie Kodner.

Josh Levin is the editorial director of Slow Burn.

Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.

Susan Matthews is Slate’s executive editor.

Editorial direction by Josh Levin, Derek John, and Joel Meyer.

Merritt Jacob is Slate’s senior technical director.

Our theme music is composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Artwork by Ivylise Simones.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Season 8 Trailer: Becoming Justice Thomas

Wed, 17 May 2023 14:30:00 GMT

Clarence Thomas is one of the most powerful figures in America today. Nearly every issue of national consequence has his fingerprints all over it, from voting rights to gun rights and from abortion access to affirmative action. But nothing about his journey from rural Georgia to the Supreme Court was inevitable.

In the eighth season of Slate’s Slow Burn, host Joel Anderson traces Justice Thomas’ surprising path from youthful radical to conservative icon. You’ll hear about why he came to despise the race-based admission policies that personally benefited him, how he credited his political rise to the Black self-sufficiency preached by Malcolm X, and what the American people didn’t hear during his explosive confirmation hearings.

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Decoder Ring: Who Owns the Tooth Fairy?

Wed, 10 May 2023 07:00:00 GMT

We pride ourselves on being grounded, rational beings, but flitting amongst us is a mystery: the Tooth Fairy. This flying piece of folklore is alive and well in the 21st century, handed down to kids in whatever way their parents see fit.

In this episode, with the help of Tinkerbell, Santa Claus, and some savvy humans who are trying to exploit this strange creature’s untapped intellectual property, we’ll explore the origins of this childhood ritual, its durability—and its remarkable resistance to commercialization.

This podcast was written by Willa Paskin, who produces Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd. This episode was edited by Jamie York. Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

Thank you to Charles Duan, Jim Piddock, Purva Merchant, Hannah Morris, Laurie Leahy, Torie Bosch, and Rebecca Onion. Also, a big tip of the hat to Rosemary Wells, the dental school instructor who in the 1970s began exploring the Tooth Fairy’s, ahem, roots . Much of Wells’ work is out of print, but you can find one of her pieces in a collection called The Good People: New Fairylore Essays.

If you haven’t please yet, subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

If you’re a fan of the show, sign up for Slate Plus. You’ll be able to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads—and your support is crucial to our work. Go to www.slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.

Decoder Ring is now available on YouTube. Listen here: https://slate.trib.al/ucMyTst

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Decoder Ring: Why You Can’t Find a Damn Parking Spot

Wed, 03 May 2023 07:00:00 GMT

Parking is one of the great paradoxes of American life. On the one hand, we have paved an ungodly amount of land to park our cars. On the other, it seems like it’s never enough.

Slate’s Henry Grabar has spent the last few years investigating how our pathological need for car storage determines the look, feel, and function of the places we live. It turns out our quest for parking has made some of our biggest problems worse.

In this episode, we’re going to hunt for parking, from the mean streets of Brooklyn to the sandy lots of Florida. We’ll explore how parking has quietly damaged the American landscape—and see what might fix it.

This episode was written by Henry Grabar, author of Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World. It was edited by Willa Paskin, who produces Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd. We had extra production from Patrick Fort and editing help from Joel Meyer. Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

Thank you to: Jane Wilberding, Rachel Weinberger, Donald Shoup, Andrés Duany, Robert Davis, Micah Davis, Christy Milliken, Fletcher Isacks, Victor Benhamou, and Nina Pareja.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, you can email us at DecoderRing@slate.com

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. (Even better, tell your friends.)

Decoder Ring is now available on YouTube. Listen here: https://slate.trib.al/ucMyTst

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Decoder Ring: The Artist Who Was Both Loved and Disdained

Wed, 26 Apr 2023 07:00:00 GMT

We bring you a special episode from Sidedoor, a podcast about the treasures that fill the vaults of the Smithsonian. This story is inspired by “Big Band,” a defining work by the painter LeRoy Neiman.

Neiman was a character, a cultural gadfly and an omnipresent artist who sat for decades right at the nexus of professional success, cultural ubiquity, and critical disregard. What made him so popular? What made him so disdained? And what can we learn from how he resolved this dissonance?

Sidedoor is produced by the Smithsonian with PRX.

The Sidedoor podcast team is Justin O'Neill, James Morrison, Stephanie De Leon Tzic, Ann Conanan, Caitlin Shaffer, Tami O'Neill, Jess Sadeq, Lara Koch, and Sharon Bryant. The show is mixed by Tarek Fouda and the theme song and episode music are by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd. Derek John is Executive Producer of Narrative Podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our Technical Director.

Special thanks to Joel Meyer, the LeRoy Neiman and Janet Byrne Neiman Foundation, especially Tara Zabor, Dan Duray, Heather Long, and Janet Neiman. Also thank you to the team at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History: Stephanie Johnson, Ken Kimery, Theo Gonzalvez, Eric Jentsch, John Troutman, Krystal Klingenberg, Valeska Hilbig, and Laura Duff. Thank you to Smithsonian Folkways Recordings for contributing music for this episode, and also to the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra.

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

If you’re a fan of the show, sign up for Slate Plus.

Slate Plus members get to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads. Their support is also crucial to our work. So please go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.

Decoder Ring is now available on YouTube. Listen here: http://y2u.be/D8cLqWAffJ8

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Decoder Ring: The Curious Case of Columbo's Message to Romania Part 2

Wed, 19 Apr 2023 07:00:00 GMT

Last week, we put on the proverbial raincoat and made like Columbo to investigate Peter Falk’s claim that he recorded a special Cold War message telling Romanians to “put down their guns.” This week, we’re back on the case, and what started out as a zany inquiry goes to some serious and surprising places.

Part two of this caper, involves dubbers, propagandists, a couple of 90 year olds and the legacy of a brutal dictatorship. It’s a story about celebrity, diplomacy, memory, and the limitations of all three—and about the power of television not to get Romanians to put down their guns, as Falk would have it, but to pick them up.

This podcast was written by Willa Paskin who produces Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd. This episode was edited by Joel Meyer. Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is senior technical director.

Special thank you to Oana Godanu Kenworthy who was instrumental in figuring this all out as well as Andrada Lautaru who translated and worked with us from Romania.

Thank you to: Andrei Codrescu, Cameron Gorman, Gabriel Roth, Ilinca Calugareanu, Harry Geisel, Elaine McDevitt, Michael Messenger, Gerald Krell, Ash Hawken, Tom Mullins, Jessica Leporin, Jerry Gruner and Marie Whalen.

There’s a number of documentaries that were instrumental to reporting this episode: Videograms from a Revolution; Chuck Norris vs Communism; The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, The Rise and Fall of Ceausescu: and Whatever Happened to Blood Sweat and Tears.

If you can’t get enough Columbo, make sure to listen to our previous two-parter on McGruff the crime dog, who was directly inspired by Peter Falk’s detective, and features a wild soundtrack.

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

If you’re a fan of the show, we'd love for you to sign up for Slate Plus.

Slate Plus members get to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads. Their support is also crucial to our work. So please go to www.slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.

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Decoder Ring: The Curious Case of Columbo's Message to Romania Part 1

Wed, 12 Apr 2023 17:26:28 GMT

Not too long ago an old clip surfaced of Peter Falk on David Letterman, in which he told an intriguing tale about recording a special Cold War message for Romanian state television. The clip went viral and got our attention — but was it actually true? Did a fictional American detective really help quell a communist revolt?

We donned the proverbial raincoat and started sleuthing—at which point Falk’s late night anecdote cracked open into an intricate geopolitical saga that stretches from DC to Bucharest; from a Los Angeles hotel room to the palatial estate of a despot. It’s a story that involves dueling ideologies, dozens of diplomats, and millions of viewers. It’s an honest-to-goodness cold war caper about American soft power behind the iron curtain, and it’s so involved it’s going to take two episodes to solve.

This podcast was written by Willa Paskin, who produces Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd. This episode was edited by Joel Meyer. Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is senior technical director.

A special thank you to Andrada Lautaru who translated and worked with me from Romania. Thank you to Carol and Joel Levy, Jonathan Rickert, Alan and Aury Fernandez, Katie Koob, Felix Rentschler, Richard Viets, Jock Shirley, Gabriel Roth, Cameron Gorman, Torie Bosch, Delia Marinescu, David Koenig, Don Giller, Forest Bachner, Corina Popa, David Langbart, William Burr, Asgeir Sigfusson, John Frankensteiner, Tom Hoban, and everyone else who helped with this episode. Thank you to Evan Chung.

For research into Romanian T.V., Willa relied heavily on the scholarly work of Dana Mustata, Alexandru Matei, Annemarie Sorescu‐Marinković, and the screening socialism project from the University of Loughborough. She also relied on the work of Dennis Deletant and Timothy W Ryback’s Rock Around the Bloc, a history of rock music in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union

You also heard a song in this episode from the Romanian band Phoenix.

If you haven’t please yet, subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

If you’re a fan of the show and want to support us, consider signing up for Slate Plus.

Slate Plus members get to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads. Their support is also crucial to our work. So please go to www.slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.

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Announcing Slow Burn Season 8

Fri, 24 Feb 2023 18:34:00 GMT

Hosted by Joel Anderson. Coming in May 2023.

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Decoder Ring: The Mailbag Episode

Tue, 03 Jan 2023 10:00:00 GMT

We’re really lucky to get a lot of listener emails, suggesting topics for the show. In this episode, we’re going to dig into a handful of the most fascinating ones that we’ve yet to tackle on the show. We’re taking on five listener questions that run the gamut—from kids menus to succulents to the chicken that crossed the road. It’s an eclectic assortment of subjects that come to us thanks to you. So let’s jump into our mailbag.

Thank you to Mark Liberman and Susan Schulten.

This podcast was written by Willa Paskin who produces the show with Katie Shepherd. This episode was also produced by Sam Kim. Derek John is Slate’s Executive Producer of Narrative Podcasts. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you haven’t please yet, subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

If you’re a fan of the show and want to support us, consider signing up for Slate Plus.

Slate Plus members get to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads. Their support is also crucial to our work. So please go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.

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Decoder Ring: ‘You’ve Got Mail’ Got It Wrong

Fri, 30 Dec 2022 10:00:00 GMT

(This episode originally aired in March 2020.)

The 1998 romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, is about the brutal fight between a beloved indie bookstore, the Shop Around the Corner, and Fox Books, an obvious Barnes & Noble stand-in. On this episode of Decoder Ring we revisit the real-life conflict that inspired the movie and displaced independent booksellers on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. This conflict illustrates how, for a brief time, Barnes & Noble was a symbol of predatory capitalism, only to be usurped by the uniting force at the heart of the film: the internet.

Some of the voices in this episode include Delia Ephron, the co-screenwriter of You’ve Got Mail, the illustrator Brian Selznick, Laura J. Miller, author of Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption, Joel Fram, founder of Eeyore’s Books for Children, and Boris Kachka, book editor for the Los Angeles Times.

This podcast was written by Willa Paskin and produced by Benjamin Frisch and Cleo Levin was research assistant.

Thanks to Steve Geck, Maris Kreizman, Emma Straub, Jacob Bernstein, Gary Hoover, Peter Glassman and June Thomas.

Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd. Derek John is Slate’s Executive Producer of Narrative Podcasts. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you haven’t please yet, subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

If you’re a fan of the show and want to support us, consider signing up for Slate Plus.

Slate Plus members get to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads. Their support is also crucial to our work. So please go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.

Sponsored by Saks.com. Check out the Holiday Gift Guide on saks.com

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Decoder Ring: Cellino & Barnes, Injury Attorneys, 800-888-8888

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 10:00:00 GMT

Ross Cellino and Steve Barnes were two Buffalo-based lawyers who became the literal poster-men for personal injury advertising. They poured millions of dollars into ads that did more than just bring in clients: it turned the duo into household names and faces—at least in New York. In this episode, we’re going to look at their rise and everything that happened after. It’s a bumpy ride full of ambition, accidents and tragedy and at its center are two men who, for 25 years, wanted to be at the front of our minds when we got hurt, but who we didn’t really notice until it all fell apart.

We hear from Ross Cellino, Rich Barnes, Jeremy Kutner, John Fabian Witt, Trish Rich, Ken Kaufman, Mike Breen, and David Rafailedes.

This podcast was written by Katie Shepherd. It was edited by Andrea Bruce and Willa Paskin. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd. Derek John is Slate’s Executive Producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

Thank you to Rachel Strom and Meryl Scheinman, host of Prank You.

If you haven’t please yet, subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

If you’re a fan of the show and want to support us, consider signing up for Slate Plus.

Slate Plus members get to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads. Their support is also crucial to our work. So please go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.

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Decoder Ring: How Preppy Became Streetwear

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 10:00:00 GMT

We bring you a special episode from the Articles of Interest podcast hosted by Avery Trufelman about the incredible reach and adaptability of preppy clothes. It’s a story about the great modernizer of Ivy style, Ralph Lauren, and how he and his label, Polo, were themselves modernized by customers who helped push preppy in a whole new direction, from the runway to the streets.

We encourage you to listen to the entire American Ivy series from Radiotopia.

Articles of Interest is created by Avery Trufelman. It’s edited by Kelly Prime, mixed and mastered by Ian Coss, fact checked by Jessia Siriano, with music by Avery, Rhae Royal, Sasami, and the Beazlebubs, the Tufts University Acapella Group.

Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd. We had mixing help on this episode from Sam Kim. Derek John is Slate’s Executive Producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you haven’t please yet, subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

If you’re a fan of the show and want to support us, consider signing up for Slate Plus.

Slate Plus members get to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads. Their support is also crucial to our work. So please go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.

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Decoder Ring: The New Age Hit Machine

Tue, 20 Dec 2022 10:00:00 GMT

For this episode, a story from Slate senior producer Evan Chung about how Yanni, John Tesh and a number of other surprising acts made it big in the 1990s. It’s a throwback to a simpler time—when musicians struggled to find their big break, but discovered it could be possible with a telephone, a television, and our undivided attention.

This story originally aired in 2019 on Studio 360 from PRX.

We hear from George Veras, Pat Callahan, and John Tesh.

This Episode was written and produced by Slate’s Evan Chung. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd. Derek John is Slate’s Executive Producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you haven’t please yet, subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

If you’re a fan of the show and want to support us, consider signing up for Slate Plus.

Slate Plus members get to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads. Their support is also crucial to our work. So please go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.

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Slow Burn: Roe v. Wade special announcement

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 14:00:00 GMT

Slow Burn: Roe v. Wade has been named Apple Podcasts Show of the Year!

We’re so honored by this award and want to thank everyone who has listened and supported the show. On this season, we looked to the past to understand what the future of abortion might look like in America. We tell the forgotten story of the first woman ever convicted of manslaughter for getting an abortion. We introduce you to the unlikely Catholic power couple who helped ignite the pro-life movement. And we look at how a rookie Supreme Court justice appointed by Nixon, tackled one of the most pivotal cases in American history.

To celebrate this award, we made a special behind-the-scenes episode on how we created the show, as well as five all new Extra episodes—with new interviews, perspectives, and ideas about what might happen next in the fight over legal abortion.

To hear those Show of the Year Extras visit: https://apple.co/showoftheyear2022

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Roe v. Wade | Creating a Winning Show

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 13:30:00 GMT

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by subscribing to Slate Plus. By joining, not only will you unlock exclusive Slow Burn episodes, but you’ll also access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen.

The team who made Slow Burn: Roe v. Wade tells the story that unfolded behind the scenes of Apple Podcasts Show of the Year, from the original pitch to the leak of the Dobbs decision. We’ll hear how host Susan Matthews first came up with the idea, how the producers dug up rare archival tape and hard-to-find sources that helped bring the story to life, and how the show tried to fairly represent both sides of the issue. Plus, we dive into what changed after the Dobbs opinion was leaked in May, a month before the show launched. Featuring host Susan Matthews, producers Samira Tazari and Sophie Summergrad, editor Josh Levin, and executive producer Derek John.

To hear all of our other Show of the Year Extras visit: https://apple.co/showoftheyear2022

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One Year: 1942 | 6. The Black-Japanese Axis

Wed, 23 Nov 2022 07:00:00 GMT

In 1942, federal officials targeted a group of Black Americans who were allegedly hoping for a Japanese invasion. They uncovered a plot that included stockpiles of weapons and secret passwords—but was any of it true? This week, Joel Anderson tells the story of a shadowy organization in East St. Louis, Illinois, the group’s mysterious leader, and an alleged conspiracy against America during World War II.

This episode of One Year was produced by Evan Chung, Sophie Summergrad, Sam Kim, Joel Anderson, Sol Werthan, and Josh Levin.

Derek John is executive producer of narrative podcasts and Merritt Jacob is senior technical director.

Slate Plus members get to hear more about the making of One Year. Get access to extra episodes, listen to the show without any ads, and support One Year by signing up for Slate Plus for just $15 for your first three months.

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Decoder Ring: The Butt and the Bustle

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 08:00:00 GMT

For about two decades towards the end of the Victorian era, in the 1870s and 1880s, a large bustle-enhanced bottom was the height of fashion. In this episode we explore how it’s connected to today’s big booty craze. We look at the bustle’s history with a curator fascinated by old undergarments; consider the various theories about its popularity with the author Heather Radke; and then hone in the tragic story of Sarah Baartman. The bustle may be old-fashioned, but it still has a lot to tell us about race, sex, power and how much people know, or let themselves know, about what they put on everyday.

We hear from Heather Radke, author of Butts: A Backstory, as well as Kristina Haughland, Janell Hobson, Pamela Scully, and Maria Garcia.

This podcast was written by Willa Paskin, who produces Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd. This episode was edited by Andrea Bruce. Derek John is Slate’s Executive Producer of Narrative Podcasts. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you haven’t please yet, subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

If you’re a fan of the show, I’d love for you to sign up for Slate Plus.

Slate Plus members get to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads. Their support is also crucial to our work. So please go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.

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One Year: 1942 | 5. When Internment Came to Alaska

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 07:00:00 GMT

Six months after Pearl Harbor, Japan launched another attack on the United States. This time, Axis forces actually invaded, turning the Aleutian Islands into a battleground. What the country did next, in the name of “protecting” Alaska’s indigenous people, is a shameful chapter of the war. And it’s one the nation has never fully reckoned with.

This episode of One Year was produced by Evan Chung, Sophie Summergrad, Sam Kim, Sol Werthan, and Josh Levin.

Derek John is senior supervising producer of narrative podcasts and Merritt Jacob is senior technical director.

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Decoder Ring: The Truth About #TheDress

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 08:00:00 GMT

In the history of viral images, #TheDress has got to be in the top 10. This unassuming photo of a party dress kicked off a global debate when people realized they were seeing it completely differently. Is it black and blue, or white and gold? In today’s episode, we’ll talk to someone who was there when the photo was first taken, and the BuzzFeed writer whose post briefly broke the internet. Then we go down the optical rabbit hole with a neuroscientist who’s been studying the The Dress for years. What does it reveal about the nature of truth?

This podcast was written by Willa Paskin, who produces Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd. This episode was edited by Andrew Adam Newman. Derek John is Slate’s senior supervising producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is senior technical director.

We’ll hear from Paul Jinks, Cates Holderness, Pascal Wallisch, and David McRaney author of the book How Minds Change. Here’s the optical illusion of the strawberries mentioned in the episode and created by Professor Akiyoshi Kitaoka.

If you haven’t please yet, subscribe and rate our feed in Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

If you’re a fan of the show, I’d love for you to sign up for Slate Plus.

Slate Plus members get to listen to Decoder Ring — and every other Slate podcast — ad-free. Their support is also crucial to our work. So please go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.

Check out Remote Works here.

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One Year: 1942 | 4. The Info Wars of World War II

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 07:00:00 GMT

In March 1942, a new nightly radio show hit the American airwaves. The stated goal of Station Debunk was to correct all the lies getting tossed around about America’s involvement in the war. But the real story was a whole lot stranger and more devious than it appeared.

One Year is produced by Evan Chung, Sophie Summergrad, Sam Kim, and Josh Levin.

Derek John is senior supervising producer of narrative podcasts and Merritt Jacob is senior technical director.

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One Year: 1942 | 3. The Day the Music Stopped

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 06:00:00 GMT

On Aug. 1, 1942, the nation’s recording studios went silent. Musicians were fed up with the new technologies threatening their livelihoods, so they refused to record until they got their fair share. This week, Evan Chung explores one of the most consequential labor actions of the 20th century, and how it coincided with an underground revolution in music led by artists like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.

One Year is produced by Evan Chung, Sophie Summergrad, Sam Kim, and Josh Levin.

Derek John is senior supervising producer of narrative podcasts and Merritt Jacob is senior technical director.

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One Year: 1942 | 2. The Year Everyone Got Married

Thu, 27 Oct 2022 06:00:00 GMT

There were 1.8 million weddings in 1942, the most that had ever been recorded in a single year in American history. But how many of them would last? 98-year-old Millie Summergrad tells the story of one that did: her own. And a pair of brothers explain what it was like to grow up inside the busiest chapel in Yuma, Arizona—the wedding capital of the United States.

One Year is produced by Evan Chung, Sophie Summergrad, Sam Kim, and Josh Levin.

Derek John is senior supervising producer of narrative podcasts and Merritt Jacob is senior technical director.

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One Year: 1942 | 1. The Most Hated Man in America

Thu, 20 Oct 2022 06:00:00 GMT

At the beginning of World War II, the greatest threat to the American war effort wasn’t the Nazis or the Japanese—it was runaway inflation. The man in charge of stopping it was the country’s “price czar,” Leon Henderson. In 1942, he controlled how much coffee ordinary people could drink and how many tires they could buy. Those rules made him a nationwide villain. But would they save the country?

One Year is produced by Evan Chung, Sophie Summergrad, Sam Kim, and Josh Levin.

Derek John is senior supervising producer of narrative podcasts and Merritt Jacob is senior technical director.

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Decoder Ring: McGruff Takes a Bite Out of Crime Pt. 2

Wed, 12 Oct 2022 01:18:00 GMT

McGruff the Crime Dog arrived on the scene at the dawn of the 1980s, just as a firehose of anti-drug PSAs was inundating the youth of America. These messages didn’t always work as intended—but they did work their way into the long term memories of the kids who heard them.

In the second episode of our two-part series on the weird world of PSAs and very special episodes, we look at how the McGruff Smart Kids Album influenced everything from straight-edge hardcore to a couple’s wedding playlist. We’ll hear from Sarah Hubbard, Dan Danger, Joseph Cappella, David Farber, Mike Hawes, Robin Nelson, Daisy Rosario, and Tatiana Peralta.

This podcast was written by Willa Paskin, who produces Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd. This episode was edited by Jamie York. Derek John is Slate’s Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts. Merritt Jacob is Sr. Technical Director.

Thank you to Tatiana Peralta, Ari Merkin, Wendy Melillo, Dan McQuade, Dale Mantley, Larissa Zargeris, Dave Bledsoe, Larre Johnson, Duane Poole, Eric Greenberg, Charles and Karen Rosen, and Jennifer Holland, Orla Mejia, Andres Martinez and everyone else at the Rutgers library who helped me listen to some old cassette tapes.

A few things that were helpful in working on this piece: How McGruff and the Crying Indian Changed America: A History of Iconic Ad Council Campaigns by Wendy Melillo, Taking a Bite out of Crime: the Impact of the National Citizens Crime Prevention Media Campaign by Garrett J O’keefe and others, and “This McGruff Drug Album Might As Well Be By Weird Al,” by Dan McQuade for Defector Media. You can hear Daniel Danger’s McGruff cover album in it’s entirety or you can purchase it here. And lastly, if you are interested in hearing the full McGruff educational program or any of Puppet Productions productions they are available for purchase at puppetsinc.com, part of a company that Rob Nelson still runs.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com

If you love the show and want to support us, consider joining Slate Plus. With Slate Plus you get ad-free podcasts, bonus episodes, and total access to all of Slate’s journalism.

Check out Remote Works here.

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Decoder Ring: McGruff Takes a Bite Out of Crime Pt. 1

Tue, 04 Oct 2022 18:00:00 GMT

In the first of two episodes, we take a look at PSAs and their strange afterlife through the lens of a trench-coat wearing bloodhound and his bizarre, yet catchy anti-drug songs. We’ll talk to Dan Danger, Sherry Nemmers, Joseph Cappella, David Farber, Mike Hawes and Robin Nelson to discover how the McGruff Smart Kids Album came to exist in the first place.

This podcast was written by Willa Paskin. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd. We had production help from Sam Kim.

Editing by Jamie York and Derek John, Slate’s Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts. Merritt Jacob is Sr. Technical Director.

Thank you to Wendy Melillo, Dan McQuade, Dale Mantley, Larissa Zargeris, Daisy Rosario, Drew Bledsoe, Larre Johnson, Duane Poole, Ari Merkin, Charles and Karen Rosen and Eric Greenberg.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com

If you love the show and want to support us, consider joining Slate Plus. With Slate Plus you get ad-free podcasts, bonus episodes, and total access to all of Slate’s journalism.

Check out Remote Works here

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One Year: 1986 | 7. The Man From Fifth Avenue

Thu, 29 Sep 2022 06:00:00 GMT

After Joe Mauri gets evicted from his New York apartment, he becomes a star in the USSR, the subject of a documentary about the injustices of capitalism. But this Cold War icon was using the Soviets just as much as they used him.

One Year is produced by Evan Chung, Sophie Summergrad, Sam Kim, Madeline Ducharme, and Josh Levin. Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

Derek John is Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts and Merritt Jacob is Sr. Technical Director.

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One Year: 1986 | 6. The Miracle of Cokeville

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 06:00:00 GMT

On May 16, 1986, a man with a bomb held an entire elementary school hostage in the tiny town of Cokeville, Wyoming. Yet instead of becoming victims of unimaginable tragedy, all of the hostages in this predominantly Mormon community survived. But how? This week, Evan Chung explores what—or who—saved the children of Cokeville.

One Year is produced by Evan Chung, Sophie Summergrad, Sam Kim, Madeline Ducharme, and Josh Levin.

Derek John is Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts and Merritt Jacob is Sr. Technical Director.

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One Year: 1986 | 5. Herschel vs. the Blubber Busters

Thu, 15 Sep 2022 06:00:00 GMT

In Seattle, a pack of voracious sea lions decimates the local fish population. When fireworks and an underwater air horn don’t scare away the whisker-y mammals, bureaucrats and scientists are faced with a thorny question: Who decides which creatures get to live, and which have to die?

One Year is produced by Evan Chung, Sophie Summergrad, Sam Kim, Madeline Ducharme, and Josh Levin.

Derek John is Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts and Merritt Jacob is Sr. Technical Director.

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One Year: 1986 | 4. A Boycott in Mississippi

Thu, 08 Sep 2022 06:00:00 GMT

Black residents of Indianola, Mississippi, were fed up with decades of separate-and-unequal classrooms. When a white outsider got hired as school superintendent, they decided to take a stand. This week, Joel Anderson tells the story of how their boycott of white businesses transformed the community and captivated the nation.

One Year is produced by Evan Chung, Sophie Summergrad, Sam Kim, Madeline Ducharme, and Josh Levin. Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

Derek John is Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts and Merritt Jacob is Sr. Technical Director.

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One Year: 1986 | 3. The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 06:00:00 GMT

Rumors about the legendary gangster Al Capone’s buried treasure transform an abandoned Chicago hotel into the center of the entertainment universe. Will Geraldo Rivera’s excavation on live TV turn up money, skeletons, or nothing at all?

One Year is produced by Evan Chung, Sophie Summergrad, Sam Kim, Madeline Ducharme, and Josh Levin.

Derek John is Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts and Merritt Jacob is Sr. Technical Director.

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One Year: 1986 | 2. The Ultimate Field Trip

Thu, 25 Aug 2022 06:00:00 GMT

This week, Evan Chung tells the story of the American teachers who competed for an unprecedented prize: a spot on the January 1986 launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Three of the finalists describe the grueling selection process and the tragedy that killed one of their own.

One Year is produced by Evan Chung, Sophie Summergrad, Sam Kim, Madeline Ducharme, and Josh Levin.

Derek John is Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts and Merritt Jacob is Sr. Technical Director.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Slow Burn presents... One Year: 1986 | 1. No Crime Day

Thu, 18 Aug 2022 06:00:00 GMT

Basketball star Isiah Thomas had an audacious plan to transform Detroit: asking criminals to stay on the good side of the law for 24 hours. Would “No Crime Day” set the city on a new path, or was it a recipe for failure?

One Year is produced by Evan Chung, Sophie Summergrad, Sam Kim, Madeline Ducharme, and Josh Levin. Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: The “Sex” Scandal That Made Mae West

Tue, 16 Aug 2022 07:00:00 GMT

In the early 1930s, Mae West’s dirty talk and hip swiveling walk made her one of the biggest movie stars in America. But before West hit the big-screen, she was prosecuted for staging not one, but two scandalous plays. In this episode, we look at how West honed her persona when she was under the bright lights of Broadway and the flashbulbs of the tabloids — and briefly behind bars. More than a century later, her career arc offers a blueprint on how to survive a scandal…and maybe even come out ahead.

This episode relied heavily on a lot of archival material and innumerable books: When I’m Bad, I’m Better: Mae West, Sex and American Entertainment by Marybeth Hamilton; When Brooklyn was Queer by Hugh Ryan; Lillian Schlissel’s introduction to Three Plays by Mae West, Mae West: a biography by George Eells and Stanley Musgrove; Mae West: An Icon in Black and White by Jill Watts; Becoming May West by Emily Wortis Leider; Gay New York by George Chauncey; Mae West, She Who Laughs Last, by June Sochen: Goodness Has Nothing to Do with It by Mae West; and Linda Ann Losciavo’s play “Courting Mae West” and her blog, which you can find at Maewest.blogspot.com.

This episode of Decoder Ring was written by Willa Paskin. It was produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd. Derek John is Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our Technical Director. Thank you to Benjamin Frisch for this topic.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com

If you love the show and want to support us, consider joining Slate Plus. With Slate Plus you get ad-free podcasts, bonus episodes, and total access to all of Slate’s journalism.

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Decoder Ring: The First Alien Abductees

Tue, 09 Aug 2022 07:00:00 GMT

When you think of an alien abduction, what do you picture? Humanoid creatures, medical experiments, lost memories retrieved through hypnosis? That narrative was largely unknown until Betty and Barney Hill went public about their own alien abduction in the 1960s. Betty Hill’s niece, Kathleen Marden, recounts how the story went viral and her aunt and uncle became unwitting celebrities. Then professors Susan Lepselter, Chris Bader, Joseph O. Baker and Stephanie Kelley-Romano explain how the Hills’ alien abduction changed science fiction forever.

Thanks to Eric Molinsky for bringing us this story that originally aired on his terrific podcast Imaginary Worlds. Eric’s got a lot more stories like this one so subscribe wherever you listen.

Decoder Ring is written by Willa Paskin and produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd. Derek John is Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com

If you love the show and want to support us, consider joining Slate Plus. With Slate Plus you get ad-free podcasts, bonus episodes, and total access to all of Slate’s journalism.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: The Most Famous Poet No One Remembers

Tue, 02 Aug 2022 07:00:00 GMT

Rod McKuen sold multiple millions of poetry books in the 60s and 70s. He released dozens of albums, was a regular on late night, and was even nominated for an Oscar. So, how did the most salable poet in American history simply disappear? On today’s episode, Slate writer Dan Kois went searching for Rod McKuen, a famous poet who isn’t so famous anymore. We’ll hear from Stephanie Burt, Mike Chasar and Barry Alfonso, author of Rod’s biography A Voice of the Warm. Along the way, Dan meets Andy Zax, a guy who, like him, was bewildered by this forgotten star—until he became an accidental fan, and then somehow the only person keeping Rod McKuen’s flame alive.

This episode of Decoder Ring was written by Dan Kois and edited by Willa Paskin. It was produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd. Derek John is Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com. If you love the show and want to support us, consider joining Slate Plus. With Slate Plus you get ad-free podcasts, bonus episodes, and total access to all of Slate’s journalism.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Slow Burn presents: Decoder Ring - The Mall is Dead (Long Live the Mall)

Tue, 26 Jul 2022 23:06:19 GMT

(While we work on the next season of Slow Burn we're showcasing Slate's other narrative podcasts, starting with a new season of Decoder Ring.)

What do we lose if we lose the mall? 70 years into their existence, these hulking temples to commerce are surprisingly resilient and filled with contradictions. In this episode, Alexandra Lange, the author of the new book Meet Me at the Fountain: an Inside History of the Mall walks us through the atriums, escalators, and food courts of this singular suburban space. We also hear from mall-goers whose personal experiences help us make sense of this disdained yet beloved, disappearing yet surviving place.

This episode of Decoder Ring was written by Willa Paskin and produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd. Derek John is Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com

If you love the show and want to support us, consider joining Slate Plus. With Slate Plus you get ad-free podcasts, bonus episodes, and total access to all of Slate’s journalism.

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Roe v. Wade | 4. Roe Against Wade

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 07:00:00 GMT

Harry Blackmun wasn’t Richard Nixon’s first choice to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. But after Blackmun was confirmed, he got the assignment of a lifetime: writing the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade. His approach to that case would have consequences he never imagined.

Season 7 of Slow Burn is produced by Susan Matthews, Samira Tazari, Sophie Summergrad, and Sol Werthan.

Derek John is Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts.

Editorial direction by Josh Levin, Derek John, and Johanna Zorn. Merritt Jacob is our Technical Director.

Our theme music is composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Artwork by Derreck Johnson based on a photo provided by Robert Wheeler.

The season’s reporting was supported by a grant from the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Roe v. Wade | 3. Women vs. Connecticut

Wed, 15 Jun 2022 07:00:00 GMT

Soon after Ann Hill arrived at Yale Law School in 1968, she realized she was pregnant. Her options were limited: she could give birth—or get an illegal abortion. The decision she faced inspired her to take on Connecticut’s abortion ban. The legal battle that followed would set the stage for Roe v. Wade.

Season 7 of Slow Burn is produced by Susan Matthews, Samira Tazari, Sophie Summergrad, and Sol Werthan.

Derek John is Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts.

Editorial direction by Josh Levin, Derek John, and Johanna Zorn. Merritt Jacob is our Technical Director.

Our theme music is composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Artwork by Derreck Johnson based on a photo provided by Robert Wheeler.

The season’s reporting was supported by a grant from the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Roe v. Wade | 2. Life or Death

Wed, 08 Jun 2022 07:00:00 GMT

Jack and Barbara Willke got their start on the Catholic speaking circuit talking about the pleasure of sex within marriage. Their daughter would convince them to shift their focus to another hot-button issue. The Willkes’ Handbook on Abortion, and the photographs they distributed along with it, would help kickstart the right-to-life movement.

To see the cover of the Handbook on Abortion, some of the photos the Willkes used, and the brochure “Life or Death,” go to slate.com/handbook.

Season 7 of Slow Burn is produced by Susan Matthews, Samira Tazari, Sophie Summergrad, and Sol Werthan.

Derek John is Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts.

Editorial direction by Josh Levin, Derek John and Johanna Zorn. Merritt Jacob is our Technical Director.

Our theme music is composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Artwork by Derreck Johnson based on a photo provided by Robert Wheeler.

The season’s reporting was supported by a grant from the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Roe v. Wade | 1. Get Married or Go Home

Wed, 01 Jun 2022 07:00:00 GMT

In 1970, 22-year-old Shirley Wheeler got an illegal abortion in Florida. When she refused to tell the police who performed the procedure, she was arrested and charged with manslaughter. In the months that followed, she’d be prosecuted and publicly condemned. She’d also become the unlikely face of the fight for reproductive rights.

Season 7 of Slow Burn is produced by Susan Matthews, Samira Tazari, Sophie Summergrad, and Sol Werthan.

Derek John is Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts.

Editorial direction by Josh Levin, Derek John and Johanna Zorn. Mixing by Merritt Jacob and Kevin Bendis.

Our theme music is composed by Alexis Cuadrado. Artwork by Derreck Johnson based on a photo provided by Robert Wheeler.

The season’s reporting was supported by a grant from the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The L.A. Riots | 8. Damages

Wed, 29 Dec 2021 08:00:00 GMT

After the largest civil disturbance in American history, Los Angeles faced a daunting task. Dozens of people had been killed and thousands injured. The city had sustained more than a billion dollars in property damage. And the riots had exposed that much of the population faced grinding poverty and hostile policing.

Los Angeles would need to be rebuilt in more ways than one. The question was, what type of city did the people of Los Angeles want? And were they capable of building it?

Season 6 of Slow Burn is produced by Joel Anderson, Jayson De Leon, Ethan Brooks, Sophie Summergrad, and Jasmine Ellis.

Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The L.A. Riots | 7. Into Ashes

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 08:00:00 GMT

On April 29, 1992, Los Angeles had erupted into chaos. Over the following days, thousands of people took to the streets. Some were unleashing their anger at the police and the justice system. Some were driven by frustration at living in poverty in one of the world’s richest cities. And some just saw a chance to plunder while law enforcement was scrambling. This is what happened next.

Season 6 of Slow Burn is produced by Joel Anderson, Jayson De Leon, Ethan Brooks, Sophie Summergrad, and Jasmine Ellis.

Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The L.A. Riots | 6. No Peace

Wed, 15 Dec 2021 08:00:00 GMT

In March 1991, Black people in Los Angeles had seen the videotape of Rodney King being beaten. In November, they’d seen Soon Ja Du sentenced to probation for killing 15-year-old Latasha Harlins. On April 29, 1992, a jury failed to convict the officers who beat King. That was the last straw.

Season 6 of Slow Burn is produced by Joel Anderson, Jayson De Leon, Ethan Brooks, Sophie Summergrad, and Jasmine Ellis.

Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The L.A. Riots | 5. The System

Wed, 08 Dec 2021 08:00:00 GMT

A year after they were caught on tape beating Rodney King, four LAPD officers went on trial. None were convicted.

How did the prosecution make its case against the cops? How did the officers hold up under questioning? And what happened when the verdict was announced?

Season 6 of Slow Burn is produced by Joel Anderson, Jayson De Leon, Ethan Brooks, Sophie Summergrad, and Jasmine Ellis.

Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The L.A. Riots | Extra: Leading Up to the Riots

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 09:00:00 GMT

This week, we're highlighting a few excerpts from this season's Slate Plus episodes—interviews with George Holliday, professor Edward Chang, L.A. Times journalist Jim Newton, and Rodney King’s best friend Johnnie Kelly—all who help to explain the cultural and social tensions building in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 1990s.

To listen to these interviews in full, learn more about the making of this season, skip all the ads, and support Slow Burn, sign up for Slate Plus now. It's only $1 for your first month.

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The L.A. Riots | 4. Glen

Wed, 24 Nov 2021 08:00:00 GMT

Rodney King never asked to be famous. The video that captured his beating at the hands of four LAPD officers plunged an ordinary man into an extraordinary situation. So how did he navigate his new life in the public eye? How did he think about what had happened to him? And how would his struggles affect the trial of the four officers who beat him?

Season 6 of Slow Burn is produced by Joel Anderson, Jayson De Leon, Ethan Brooks, Sophie Summergrad, and Jasmine Ellis.

Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The L.A. Riots | 3. The Chief

Wed, 17 Nov 2021 08:00:00 GMT

In 1991, Daryl Gates was the face of the LAPD. Over the course of his 13-year tenure as chief, he had built his police department into a paramilitary-style force that enforced the racial boundaries of the city.

Rodney King’s beating had exposed the brutality of Gates’ police force to the city. In the weeks after the video aired, L.A.’s most powerful institutions joined together to call for an end to Gates’ career and the style of policing that had resulted in King’s beating.

But even with much of the city’s political leadership unified against him, Gates was ready for a fight.

Season 6 of Slow Burn is produced by Joel Anderson, Jayson De Leon, Ethan Brooks, Sophie Summergrad, and Jasmine Ellis.

Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The L.A. Riots | 2. No Justice

Wed, 10 Nov 2021 10:30:00 GMT

In March 1991, the video of the Rodney King beating was national news. The LAPD was under intense scrutiny and many white Americans were seeing a side of policing they’d never seen before.

Just a few days after George Holliday’s tape aired, the residents of South Central, Los Angeles were forced to confront yet another devastating act of violence: The killing of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins.

How did a deadly altercation at a convenience store set off a battle between Los Angeles’ Black residents and its immigrant shopkeepers? And how did the justice system respond?

Season 6 of Slow Burn is produced by Joel Anderson, Jayson De Leon, Ethan Brooks, Sophie Summergrad, and Jasmine Ellis.

Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The L.A. Riots | 1. The Tape

Wed, 03 Nov 2021 09:30:00 GMT

On the night of March 2nd, 1991, at a remote intersection just outside of L.A., four police officers surrounded an unarmed Black man. They struck him 56 times with their batons before arresting him.

Across the street, standing on his second-floor balcony, a bystander named George Holliday recorded the scene on his home video camera.

This is what happened after the camera stopped rolling.

Season 6 of Slow Burn is produced by Joel Anderson, Jayson De Leon, Ethan Brooks, Sophie Summergrad, and Jasmine Ellis.

Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Season 6 Trailer: The L.A. Riots

Tue, 26 Oct 2021 14:30:00 GMT

In 1992, a jury failed to convict the four Los Angeles police officers who'd been captured on videotape beating Rodney King. The city erupted into fire and chaos – the culmination of decades of unchecked police abuse and racial injustice.

For the sixth season of Slate’s Slow Burn, Joel Anderson returns to explore the people and events behind the biggest civil disturbance in American history – a story that’s still playing out today.

Slow Burn Season 6 is hosted by Joel Anderson. He is the host of Slow Burn Season 3: Biggie and Tupac, a co-host of Slate's Hang-Up and Listen, and covers the intersection of race, politics, and sports for Slate.

The season begins on Wednesday, November 3rd.

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One Year: Jesus on a Tortilla

Fri, 20 Aug 2021 13:00:00 GMT

After Maria Rubio saw Jesus on a tortilla, her family got besieged by believers and gawkers and the national press. But for the Rubios, the tortilla wasn’t just a public spectacle. It was the miracle that changed their family. And decades later, they’re still reckoning with how that tortilla upended everything.

One Year is produced by Josh Levin, Evan Chung, and Madeline Ducharme. Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

To support this show, subscribe to One Year on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One Year: Roots: The Saga of Alex Haley

Thu, 12 Aug 2021 19:00:00 GMT

Alex Haley’s Roots displayed the brutal realities of slavery to more than 100 million Americans. The book and mini-series also made a bold claim: that Haley was the first Black American to trace his lineage all the way back to Africa, and to a specific ancestor captured into slavery. What would it mean, for Haley and America, if he hadn’t found what he said he’d found?

To support this show, subscribe to One Year on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One Year: Mr. Marijuana and the Drug Czar

Tue, 10 Aug 2021 15:00:00 GMT

America’s top weed evangelist and the nation’s drug czar shared the same goal: to loosen up the country’s marijuana laws. In 1977, everything was trending their way—until a blowout Christmas party destroyed their plans, and transformed the future of marijuana in the United States.

One Year is produced by Josh Levin, Evan Chung, and Madeline Ducharme. Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

To support this show, subscribe to One Year on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One Year: Elvis, the Pledge, and Extraterrestrials

Thu, 05 Aug 2021 18:00:00 GMT

Three stories from one day in August 1977. Elvis Presley dies, and the National Enquirer goes after the ultimate tabloid scoop: a photo of the King in his coffin. A New Jersey high schooler becomes a pariah when she refuses to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Astronomers in Ohio get a mysterious signal from outer space—could it be a message from aliens?

One Year is produced by Josh Levin, Evan Chung, and Madeline Ducharme. Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

To support this show, subscribe to One Year on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One Year: The Miracle Cure

Mon, 02 Aug 2021 20:15:00 GMT

Medical authorities said that Laetrile was dangerous quackery. It became a sensation anyway. Diana Green saw this drug made from apricot pits as her son Chad’s best chance to survive leukemia. Her shocking actions, and the little boy affected by them, became the focus of a heated national debate over freedom of medical choice.

One Year is produced by Josh Levin, Evan Chung, and Madeline Ducharme. Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

To support this show, subscribe to One Year on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One Year: Mary Shane's Rookie Season

Thu, 29 Jul 2021 19:00:00 GMT

Mary Shane made history with the Chicago White Sox, becoming the first woman hired as a legitimate major-league baseball announcer. But in 1977, she had to fight to be taken seriously in one of America’s most sexist industries.

One Year is produced by Josh Levin, Evan Chung, and Madeline Ducharme. Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

To support this show, subscribe to One Year on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Decoder Ring: The Sign Painter

Thu, 22 Jul 2021 11:00:00 GMT

Decoder Ring is Slate's show about cracking cultural mysteries. In each episode, host Willa Paskin takes a cultural question, object, or habit, examines its history, and tries to figure out what it means and why it matters.

This episode introduces you to Ilona Granet, who was a New York art-scene fixture who won the praise of the art world when she put up anti-harassment street signs in lower Manhattan in the mid- 1980s. Her career seemed like a sure thing, but three decades on, and so much more art later, it still hasn’t materialized, even as her contemporaries are now hanging in museums. This episode is not about the familiar myth of making it, but the mystery of not making it. What happens, to an artist—to anyone—when they’re good enough, but that’s not enough?

If you like the show, subscribe to Decoder Ring on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

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One Year: Anita Bryant's War on Gay Rights

Fri, 09 Jul 2021 17:52:00 GMT

Slate's new podcast One Year and will introduce you to people and ideas that changed American history--one year at a time. The show is hosted by Josh Levin, Slate's national editor and host of Slow Burn Season 4. And our first season covers 1977: a year when gay rights hung in the balance, Roots dominated the airwaves, and Jesus appeared on a tortilla.

In this show, we’ll focus on key moments that transformed politics, culture, science, religion, and more. This episode you’re about to hear will take you into a courtroom in Miami, Florida, where a local fight over gay rights was about to become a huge national standoff, one with life-altering stakes for millions of Americans. And at the center of it all was a pop singer and orange juice spokesperson named Anita Bryant.

How does the nation’s past shape our present? Subscribe to One Year on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Road to the Iraq War | 8. Shock and Awe

Wed, 16 Jun 2021 09:00:00 GMT

The Bush administration didn’t just fail to plan for post-war Iraq. Before and during the invasion, they made choices that compounded the mistake of going to war. Those decisions had lasting consequences for the world and for the Iraqi people. Who’s most responsible for that tragedy?

Season 5 of Slow Burn is produced by Noreen Malone, Jayson De Leon, and Sophie Summergrad. Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Road to the Iraq War | 7. Judy

Wed, 09 Jun 2021 21:15:00 GMT

In the months before the invasion of Iraq, the media mostly backed the Bush administration’s narrative about weapons of mass destruction. No reporter was more influential on that beat than the New York Times' Judith Miller.

How did she get the story so wrong—and why was she the only person to take the fall?

Season 5 of Slow Burn is produced by Noreen Malone, Jayson De Leon, and Sophie Summergrad. Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Road to the Iraq War | 6. Big, if True

Wed, 02 Jun 2021 09:00:00 GMT

On Feb. 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the United Nations to make the Bush administration’s closing argument for war with Iraq. Powell didn’t know it at the time, but one major piece of intelligence he cited came from a shady source—a man code-named Curveball.

How did Curveball’s bad information make it into Powell’s speech? And why did no one listen when a woman from the CIA tried to warn everyone?

Season 5 of Slow Burn is produced by Noreen Malone, Jayson De Leon, and Sophie Summergrad. Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Road to the Iraq War | 5. Four Dicks (and Vice President Cheney)

Wed, 26 May 2021 09:00:00 GMT

Four men in Congress—two from each party—helped determine whether President George W. Bush would be given the authority to invade Iraq. All of them were named Dick. Which of these Dicks scrutinized the case for war the most closely? And who was making obvious political calculations?

Season 5 of Slow Burn is produced by Noreen Malone, Jayson De Leon, and Sophie Summergrad. Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Extra: More on the Road to Iraq

Wed, 19 May 2021 10:00:00 GMT

This week, we're highlighting a few excerpts from this season's Slate Plus episodes—interviews with Ann Curry, Slate writers and editors who blogged about the war in 2003, and people who personally knew Ahmad Chalabi.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Road to the Iraq War | 4. Fighting Words

Wed, 12 May 2021 10:00:00 GMT

In the year leading up the invasion, George W. Bush sketched his justification for the war: good vs. evil, us vs. them. The president wasn’t interested in fleshing out the details beyond that, but lots of other people were.

How did intellectuals, on both the right and left, help bolster the Bush administration’s case for war? And how much responsibility should they bear for one of America’s deadliest mistakes?

Season 5 of Slow Burn is produced by Noreen Malone, Jayson De Leon, and Sophie Summergrad. Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Road to the Iraq War | 3. Mushroom Clouds

Wed, 05 May 2021 10:00:00 GMT

To start a war of choice, you need a casus belli—a case for war. Why did the Bush administration settle on weapons of mass destruction as their case for war? And how did they make that case to the American people?

Season 5 of Slow Burn is produced by Noreen Malone, Jayson De Leon, and Sophie Summergrad. Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Road to the Iraq War | 2. Terror

Wed, 28 Apr 2021 10:00:00 GMT

Just hours after 9/11, American decision makers had already started thinking about attacking Iraq. When the anthrax attacks began a month later, those ideas went into overdrive. Did Iraq have anything to do with mailing anthrax letters? Did it matter?

Season 5 of Slow Burn is produced by Noreen Malone, Jayson De Leon, and Sophie Summergrad. Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Road to the Iraq War | 1. The Exile

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 10:00:00 GMT

Eighteen years have passed since the United States invaded Iraq. It’s a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed America’s credibility on the world stage. How much can that war be traced to one Iraqi exile’s longstanding quest to return to Baghdad?

Season 5 of Slow Burn is produced by Noreen Malone, Jayson De Leon, and Sophie Summergrad. Mixing by Merritt Jacob.

Production help from Margaret Kelley.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Season 5 Trailer: The Road to the Iraq War

Thu, 15 Apr 2021 12:30:00 GMT

In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq without provocation. Most Americans supported the war—as did most politicians and intellectuals, both liberal and conservative. Today, it’s universally considered a disaster.

Hosted by award-winning reporter Noreen Malone, the fifth season of Slow Burn explores the people and ideas that propelled the country into the Iraq war, and the institutions that failed to stop it. How did the Iraq catastrophe happen? And what was it like to watch America make one of its most consequential mistakes?

Slow Burn Season 5 is hosted by Noreen Malone. Formerly, she was the editorial director of New York Magazine, and a host of Slate’s “The Waves.” Her magazine reporting has earned a George Polk Award.

The season begins on Wednesday, April 21st.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Introducing: I Spy

Fri, 29 Jan 2021 15:00:00 GMT

We're excited to introduce you to I Spy, a production of Foreign Policy. Each week on I Spy, a former intelligence operative from somewhere around the world tells the story of a single mission. They've featured guests from the CIA, Mossad, MI5, the KGB, and more. The host is three-time Emmy winner Margo Martindale, who played Claudia the KGB handler on FX’s hit show The Americans.

In this first episode of season 3, DEA special agent Steve Murphy describes his role in the hunt for narco-terrorist Pablo Escobar in Colombia in the early 1990s. This is part one of a two-part episode. To hear part 2, make sure to look for I Spy wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Extra: What We Can Learn From 1991

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 21:59:00 GMT

A few excerpts from Season 4's bonus interviews, and a special Slow Burn announcement.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Duke | 6. A Concerned Citizen

Wed, 22 Jul 2020 09:00:00 GMT

In the fall of 1991, David Duke looked like a real threat to become the governor of Louisiana.

On the sixth and final episode of Slow Burn's fourth season: What arguments did David Duke's opponents make? Who did they hope to persuade? And what did it mean, in those four weeks in 1991, to stand up and be counted?

Season 4 of Slow Burn is produced by Josh Levin and Christopher Johnson. Mixing by Paul Mounsey. Slow Burn’s production assistant is Madeline Ducharme and Sophie Summergrad is the podcast’s assistant producer.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Duke | 5. The Road to Hell

Wed, 15 Jul 2020 09:00:00 GMT

Edwin Edwards was a towering force in Louisiana politics. Buddy Roemer dethroned him and promised to modernize the state. In 1991, David Duke challenged both of them—and was soon on the verge of the biggest victory of his life.

In Episode 5 of Slow Burn: How a Louisiana governor’s race became one of the most consequential elections in modern American history.

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David Duke | 4. A Silent Army

Wed, 08 Jul 2020 09:00:00 GMT

David Duke wasn’t content being a state representative. He wanted to go national, and in 1990 he expanded his base of white voters to try to attain that goal.

In Episode 4 of Slow Burn: How David Duke made himself a political sensation—and the message that his supporters sent when they cast their ballots.

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Cold Call

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 09:00:00 GMT

In 1989, a Black 12-year-old girl in New Orleans found the David Duke phenomenon, and Duke himself, hard to comprehend. So she called Duke on the phone to ask him some questions.

In this Slow Burn interlude: how a budding journalist outdid the professionals. Plus, why we won’t be interviewing David Duke for our series.

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David Duke | 3. The Nazi and the Republicans

Wed, 24 Jun 2020 09:00:00 GMT

In 1989, David Duke got a foothold in American politics. To build on that victory, he’d have to fend off a Republican official determined to bring him down.

In the third episode of our series: the people who tried to stop David Duke’s rise, and the ones who accommodated him.

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David Duke | 2. Robe and Ritual

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 09:00:00 GMT

David Duke dreamed of becoming the charismatic leader who’d bring racism to the masses. He tried to make that dream a reality by seizing on America’s most powerful symbol of white supremacist terror.

On the second episode of Slow Burn’s fourth season: what David Duke’s years as a leader in the Ku Klux Klan reveal about his beliefs and ambitions, and why Duke decided to leave the Klan behind.

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David Duke | 1. White Knight

Wed, 10 Jun 2020 14:00:00 GMT

In the first half of the 1980s, it looked like David Duke’s career as a professional racist was over. But the former Ku Klux Klan leader had a comeback plan: He was going to keep quiet about his most hateful beliefs—and run for the Louisiana House of Representatives.

On the first episode of Slow Burn’s fourth season: the campaign that changed David Duke’s life, and that made him a threat to take control of Louisiana.

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Season 4 Trailer: David Duke

Mon, 08 Jun 2020 15:00:00 GMT

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a white supremacist became an American political phenomenon. David Duke’s rise to power and prominence—his election to the Louisiana legislature, and then his campaigns for the U.S. Senate and the governorship—was an existential crisis for the state and the nation. The fourth season of Slate’s Slow Burn will explore how a Nazi sympathizer and former Klansman fashioned himself into a mainstream figure, and why some voters came to embrace his message. It will also examine how activists, journalists, and ordinary citizens confronted Duke’s candidacy, and what it took to stop him.

Slow Burn Season 4 is hosted by Josh Levin, Slate's national editor and a native Louisianian.

The season begins on Wednesday, June 10. That day, Slate Plus members will get the first three episodes of Slow Burn, while non-members will get Episode 1. Subscribe to Slate Plus here.

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Live: Party & Bullshit

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 09:00:00 GMT

A special edition of Slow Burn features Joel Anderson live on stage, with legendary producers Nashiem Myrick and Easy Moe Bee, and Reverend Conrad Tillard, known in the 90s as "The Hip Hop Minister." Plus, a story from the season 3 cutting room floor.

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Announcement: Slow Burn's Watergate Season on TV

Fri, 14 Feb 2020 22:55:00 GMT

Slow Burn's Watergate season is now a TV docu-series, premiering Feb. 16 on Epix. Read more about it in this interview with host Leon Neyfakh.

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Introducing: Broken Record

Fri, 27 Dec 2019 17:30:00 GMT

Hey Slow Burn listeners. We have something special for you this week. It's an episode of Broken Record, a music podcast from Pushkin Industries, co-hosted by Malcolm Gladwell and music producer Rick Rubin. In the episode, Malcolm and Rick talk to Questlove about his memories of the MOVE police bombing in Philly, the music of his childhood, and Quest gets behind the drums to show the evolution of his playing.

Being the music lover he is, Questlove can't help but turn the tables to ask Rick about his own Hip Hop history: working on the Beastie Boys' first album, License to Ill, and LL Cool J's first album, Radio. Then it all culminates in one of the best Obama stories ever. You can subscribe to Broken Record wherever you get your podcasts, and see some amazing studio session photos on Instagram, @TheBrokenRecordPod.

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Biggie and Tupac | Epilogue: Got a Story to Tell

Fri, 20 Dec 2019 11:00:00 GMT

Slate Plus members get a bonus episode of Slow Burn every week. This is a preview of the bonus episodes released this season:—interviews with Slow Burn host Joel Anderson and producer Christopher Johnson about the making of the series, and extended interviews they conducted with Tupac's attorney Shawn Holley, hip-hop journalist Matty C, and Biggie biographer Cheo Hodari Coker.

Want more Slow Burn? Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately access all episodes of Slow Burn (and your other favorite Slate podcasts) completely ad-free. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen.

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Biggie and Tupac | 8. Dead Wrong

Wed, 18 Dec 2019 12:58:00 GMT

Questions have swirled around the murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls ever since their deaths. Who killed them, and why? How come no one was ever charged in either case? Is Tupac still alive and hiding out somewhere?

On the final episode of the season, we look at the investigations into the deaths of two rap legends and the competing theories of their cases. We also explore their enormous legacies, and what hip-hop lost when they died.

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by joining Slate Plus. As a member, you'll unlock full, ad-free access to Slow Burn and your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slow Burn show page on ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠ and ⁠Spotify⁠. Or, visit ⁠slate.com/slowburnplus⁠ to get access wherever you listen.

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Biggie and Tupac | 7. To Live and Die in LA

Wed, 11 Dec 2019 10:00:00 GMT

In this week's episode: After Tupac’s murder: Revenge killings in Compton, a day of atonement in Harlem, and Biggie Smalls risks everything by going back to Cali.

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by joining Slate Plus. As a member, you'll unlock full, ad-free access to Slow Burn and your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slow Burn show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen.

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Biggie and Tupac | 6. Til Somebody Kills You

Wed, 04 Dec 2019 10:00:00 GMT

In this episode: In the summer of 1996, Tupac Shakur seemed to be on the verge of a decision—about what kind of career he wanted to have, and what kind of life he wanted to live. And then he went to Las Vegas.

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Biggie and Tupac | Plus: "East vs. West"

Sat, 30 Nov 2019 11:00:00 GMT

In this Slow Burn bonus episode, host Joel Anderson and producer Christopher Johnson discuss the growing feud between Tupac and Biggie and the role of Faith Evans. Then, you’ll hear an extended interview with Larry “The Blackspot” Hester, a former staff writer at Vibe who interviewed Tupac, Biggie, and other people at Death Row and Bad Boy as their drama heated up.

Production by Chau Tu.

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Biggie and Tupac | 5. Wrath of a Menace

Wed, 27 Nov 2019 10:00:00 GMT

In this episode: Tupac claims—loudly, publicly, and with very little evidence—that he’s been sleeping with Faith Evans, Biggie’s estranged wife.

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Biggie and Tupac | 4. Against Those Thugs

Wed, 20 Nov 2019 10:00:00 GMT

In this episode: Gangsta rap becomes a huge money maker. Civil rights activist C. Delores Tucker and conservative culture warrior Bill Bennett launch a crusade against offensive lyrics. And hip-hop divides black leaders along generational and gender lines.

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Biggie and Tupac | 3. What's Beef?

Wed, 13 Nov 2019 10:00:00 GMT

In this episode: Biggie releases “Who Shot Ya,” an instant hip-hop classic that Tupac takes as a personal affront. Tupac calls out Biggie and Puffy in a jailhouse interview. And the Death Row and Bad Boy crews start preparing for war.

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Biggie and Tupac | 2. Cops on My Tail

Wed, 06 Nov 2019 10:00:00 GMT

In 1992, Ronald Ray Howard shot and killed Texas state trooper Bill Davidson. His lawyer argued he’d been driven to murder by the music he’d been playing in his car: a dubbed copy of Tupac Shakur’s first album, 2Pacalypse Now.

On the second episode of Slow Burn’s third season: How gangsta rap and law enforcement found themselves at war.

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Biggie and Tupac | 1. Against the World

Wed, 30 Oct 2019 09:00:00 GMT

On the first episode of Slow Burn’s third season: How a violent robbery severed Tupac’s friendship with Biggie Smalls and sparked a bicoastal beef that consumed the world of hip-hop.

In November 1994, while on trial for sexual abuse, Tupac Shakur is shot five times in a New York recording studio. In the aftermath, he starts to suspect that his erstwhile friend Christopher Wallace, better known as Biggie Smalls, might be involved. It was the start of a beef that would consume the world of hip-hop and end with both men dead.

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Season 3 Trailer: Biggie and Tupac

Thu, 24 Oct 2019 18:30:00 GMT

In its first two seasons, Slow Burn looked back at two of the biggest stories of the late 20th century—the Watergate scandal and the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Season three of the show tackles another: the murders of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. The story takes place at a moment when hip-hop was taking over pop culture, and the world’s two most famous rappers were a former theater kid from the Bay Area and a one-time crack dealer from Brooklyn. In just a few years, they changed music forever. They went from friends to enemies. And they ended up victims of a deadly rivalry between two rap scenes.

How is it that two of the most famous performers in the world were murdered within a year of each other—and their killings were never solved? Find out in Slow Burn season three: Biggie and Tupac.

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Introducing The Queen

Tue, 04 Jun 2019 09:00:00 GMT

Linda Taylor was a con artist, a kidnapper, maybe even a murderer. She was also America’s original “welfare queen,” the villain Ronald Reagan needed to create a vision of a country being taken advantage of by its poorest citizens. In this new narrative mini-series, Josh Levin, one of the editors behind Slow Burn, reveals the never-before-told story of a woman whose singular life was forgotten in the rush to create a vicious American stereotype.

This podcast is based on Josh Levin’s new book, The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth.

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Slow Burn Live: The Kingdom and the Power

Wed, 05 Dec 2018 09:00:00 GMT

A special edition of Slow Burn features Leon Neyfakh live on stage. In the second of two episodes, Leon was joined in by Emily Bazelon, Wesley Morris, Dan Savage, and Andi Zeisler to explore lingering questions about the Clinton legacy. Plus, Clara Jeffery discusses Hillary Clinton.

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Slow Burn Live: Keyholes

Wed, 28 Nov 2018 09:00:00 GMT

A special edition of Slow Burn features Leon Neyfakh live on stage. In the first of two episodes, Leon was joined in by Ruth Marcus and Rick Perlstein to explore lingering questions about the Clinton legacy. Plus, a story from the season 2 cutting room floor.

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The Clinton Impeachment | 8. Move On

Wed, 10 Oct 2018 08:00:00 GMT

Juanita Broaddrick told Ken Starr’s team of prosecutors that Bill Clinton had raped her in 1978. Her story wasn’t included in the Starr Report—but members of congress found out about it anyway, and had to decide how it would affect their vote on impeachment. In the final episode of our series on Clinton’s impeachment, Leon Neyfakh talks to Broaddrick, and to Lisa Myers, the NBC News reporter whose interview with Broaddrick became a cause célèbre during the impeachment trial. What does it mean that Broaddrick’s story has never really become a part of Bill Clinton’s?

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by joining Slate Plus. As a member, you'll unlock full, ad-free access to Slow Burn and your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slow Burn show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen.

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The Clinton Impeachment | Secret Tracks

Wed, 03 Oct 2018 09:00:00 GMT

Every week, Slate Plus members get a special episode of Slow Burn in which Leon Neyfakh talks to people connected with the Clinton impeachment saga. This week, we’re presenting excerpts from those bonus episodes, featuring interviews with Linda Tripp, consultant Dick Morris, former acting solicitor general Walter Dellinger, and Dillon Teachout, an intern in the independent counsel’s office.

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The Clinton Impeachment | 7. Bedfellows

Wed, 26 Sep 2018 08:00:00 GMT

Today it’s conventional wisdom that all feminists hypocritically turned their backs on Monica Lewinsky. In fact, the scandal provoked an intense debate within the feminist movement about sex, power, and consent. For some, it was obvious that Clinton had victimized Lewinsky and needed to be thrown overboard. For others, it was just as obvious that the scandal was part of a political war in which Clinton was the good guy. In the seventh episode of our series on Clinton’s impeachment, Leon Neyfakh excavates the arguments and ideas that divided liberals—and feminists in particular—at the height of the scandal.

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by joining Slate Plus. As a member, you'll unlock full, ad-free access to Slow Burn and your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slow Burn show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen.

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The Clinton Impeachment | 6. God Mode

Wed, 19 Sep 2018 08:00:00 GMT

Some of the most withering criticism of Clinton came from a coalition of conservative activists whose political views were bound up with their faith. The influence of the Christian right within the Republican Party had been growing steadily since the Reagan years. When the Lewinsky story broke, the movement’s leaders pounced on it with righteous vigor.

In the sixth episode of our series on Clinton’s impeachment, Leon Neyfakh charts the religious right’s campaign against the president and how it failed.

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by joining Slate Plus. As a member, you'll unlock full, ad-free access to Slow Burn and your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slow Burn show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen.

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The Clinton Impeachment | 5. Tell-All

Wed, 12 Sep 2018 08:00:00 GMT

Aside from Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, the most pivotal player in the Clinton impeachment saga may have been Linda Tripp—an ordinary person who made extraordinary choices that precipitated the entire crisis. In perhaps the deepest and most intimate interview she’s ever given, Tripp talks to Leon Neyfakh about what she did, and why.

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by joining Slate Plus. As a member, you'll unlock full, ad-free access to Slow Burn and your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slow Burn show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen.

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The Clinton Impeachment | 4. Alone, Together

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 08:00:00 GMT

What happened between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky? Why did it happen? And what are we supposed to do about the fact that the whims and impulses of individual men can—and constantly do—alter the course of history?

In the fourth episode of our series on Clinton’s impeachment, Leon Neyfakh details Clinton and Lewinsky’s reckless affair.

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by joining Slate Plus. As a member, you'll unlock full, ad-free access to Slow Burn and your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slow Burn show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen.

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The Clinton Impeachment | 3. Cred

Wed, 22 Aug 2018 08:00:00 GMT

When Bill Clinton went to Washington, rumors and accusations from his Arkansas past went with him. But even his most dedicated political enemies couldn't predict where their efforts would lead.

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by joining Slate Plus. As a member, you'll unlock full, ad-free access to Slow Burn and your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slow Burn show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen.

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The Clinton Impeachment | 2. There There

Wed, 15 Aug 2018 08:00:00 GMT

In 1993, Bill and Hillary Clinton moved into the White House on a swell of optimism. In less than a year, the new administration was mired in a sea of scandals: Travelgate, Filegate, Nannygate, and, most consequentially, Whitewater. What went wrong?

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The Clinton Impeachment | 1. Deal or No Deal

Wed, 08 Aug 2018 08:00:00 GMT

For 11 hours, Monica Lewinsky faced off against federal prosecutors who wanted her to help them take down the president and threatened her with decades in jail.

Audible is the world's largest audiobook publisher. For a 30-day trial and a free audiobook, go to audible.com/slowburn

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Season 2 Trailer: The Clinton Impeachment

Mon, 23 Jul 2018 20:50:00 GMT

The saga of Bill Clinton’s impeachment is rich with forgotten characters, surprising subplots, and opportunities to reflect on just how much America has changed over the past 20 years. Whether you’re well-versed in the tale of Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, or you’re fuzzy on the details, this season of Slow Burn will take you further into the story than you’ve ever been.

From its origins in the Whitewater real estate controversy, the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit, and the suicide of Vince Foster, Clinton’s near-removal from office was the culmination of a process that remains poorly understood—and continues to reverberate through our political system today.

While Season I of Slow Burn captured what it was like to live through Watergate, Season II offers a fresh reexamination of the choices, circumstances, and manipulations that nearly destroyed the 42nd president and forever changed the life of a former White House intern.

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Watergate | Live in New York

Tue, 22 May 2018 09:00:00 GMT

A special edition of Slow Burn features Leon Neyfakh live on stage in New York City. On April 19th, Leon was joined by Bob Woodward, Virginia Heffernan, Gail Sheehy, Mary DeOreo and Marc Lackritz to discuss Trump, Watergate and Nixon’s legacy.

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Watergate | 8. Going South

Tue, 30 Jan 2018 09:00:00 GMT

What had to happen for the Watergate scandals to end Richard Nixon’s career? And was his downfall inevitable? In the final episode of Slow Burn’s first season, Leon Neyfakh assesses the president’s desperate final campaign to save himself—and the people and institutions that finally brought him down.

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by joining Slate Plus. As a member, you'll unlock full, ad-free access to Slow Burn and your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slow Burn show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen.

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Extra, Extra

Tue, 23 Jan 2018 09:00:00 GMT

Slate Plus members get a bonus episode of Slow Burn every week. This week, we're releasing some samples of those episodes—interviews with people with a unique perspective on Watergate.

Next week: The end. Find out more at slate.com/slowburn.

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Watergate | 7. Saturday Night

Tue, 16 Jan 2018 09:00:00 GMT

What did Richard Nixon do when he felt the walls closing in? How did the country respond? And what did it feel like when people finally got to hear those tapes?

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by joining Slate Plus. As a member, you'll unlock full, ad-free access to Slow Burn and your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slow Burn show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen.

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Watergate | 6. Rabbit Holes

Tue, 09 Jan 2018 09:00:00 GMT

Why were so many Americans ready to believe conspiracy theories after Watergate? How did those beliefs help trigger Nixon‘s downfall? And given what we know about Watergate—what separates a conspiracy theory from just a theory?

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by joining Slate Plus. As a member, you'll unlock full, ad-free access to Slow Burn and your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slow Burn show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen.

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Watergate | 5. True Believers

Tue, 02 Jan 2018 09:00:00 GMT

At a bar in Queens, and in the Senate offices, Nixon's supporters stood with him long after it was clear his hands were dirty. How did they rationalize their position? And what, finally, made them waver?

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by joining Slate Plus. As a member, you'll unlock full, ad-free access to Slow Burn and your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slow Burn show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen.

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Watergate | 4. Lie Detectors

Tue, 19 Dec 2017 09:00:00 GMT

How a folksy segregationist senator, a team of young investigators, and a few whistleblowers staged the hearings that made Watergate must-see TV.

Want more Slow Burn? Join Slate Plus to unlock full, ad-free access to Slow Burn and your other favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe to Slate Plus on Apple Podcasts by clicking "Try Free" at the top of the Slow Burn show page. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen.

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Watergate | 3. A Very Successful Cover-Up

Tue, 12 Dec 2017 09:00:00 GMT

Woodward and Bernstein, Walter Cronkite, and a host of other journalists tried to make people care about Watergate in the run-up to the 1972 election. They totally failed.

This episode is member-exclusive. Listen to it now by joining Slate Plus. As a member, you'll unlock full, ad-free access to Slow Burn and your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slow Burn show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen.

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Watergate | 2. The Defeat of Wright Patman

Tue, 05 Dec 2017 09:00:00 GMT

In 1973, the Senate Watergate hearings gripped the nation. But the first congressional hearings on the scandal took place a year earlier—and featured an angry Texan shouting at four empty chairs.

Want more Slow Burn? Join Slate Plus to unlock full, ad-free access to Slow Burn and your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slow Burn show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen.

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Watergate | 1. Martha

Tue, 28 Nov 2017 09:00:00 GMT

People called her crazy, and to be fair she must have seemed crazy. But she was onto something. How Martha Mitchell, the celebrity wife of one of Nixon’s closest henchmen, tried to blow the whistle on Watergate—and ended up ruining her life.

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Season 1 Trailer: Watergate

Fri, 17 Nov 2017 15:35:00 GMT

It took two years for the Watergate scandal to unfold—for a break-in at the Democratic Party's headquarters to go from a weird little caper to a constitutional crisis that brought down a president. What was it like to experience those two years in real time?

Hosted by Leon Neyfakh. An eight-episode podcast series made possible by Slate Plus members. Coming Nov. 28.

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