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Slow Burn

Slate Podcastsslate.com
Slow Burn illuminates America’s most consequential moments, making sense of the past to better understand the present. Through archival tape and first-person interviews, the series uncovers the surprising events and little-known characters lurking within the biggest stories of our time. 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. Season 10: The Rise of Fox News How a cable news channel became a cultural and political force—and how a whole bunch of people rose up to try and stop it. Season 9: Gays Against Briggs A nationwide moral panic, a California legislator who rode the anti-gay wave, and the LGBTQ+ people who stepped up and came out to try and stop him. Season 8: Becoming Justice Thomas Where Clarence Thomas came from, how he rose to power, and how he’s brought the rest of us along with him, whether we like it or not. Winner of the Podcast of the Year at the 2024 Ambies Awards. Season 7: Roe v. Wade The women who fought for legal abortion, the activists who pushed back, and the justices who thought they could solve the issue for good. Winner of Apple Podcasts Show of the Year in 2022. Season 6: The L.A. Riots How decades of police brutality, a broken justice system, and a video tape set off six days of unrest in Los Angeles. Season 5: The Road to the Iraq War Eighteen months after 9/11, the United States invaded a country that had nothing to do with the attacks. Who’s to blame? And was there any way to stop it? Season 4: David Duke America’s most famous white supremacist came within a runoff of controlling Louisiana. How did David Duke rise to power? And what did it take to stop him? Season 3: Biggie and Tupac 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? Season 2: The Clinton Impeachment A reexamination of the scandals that nearly destroyed the 42nd president and forever changed the life of a former White House intern. Season 1: Watergate What did it feel like to live through the scandal that brought down President Nixon?

Episodes

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

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 ...

Mar 26, 202558 min

Supercommunicators | 3. How to Have the Hardest Conversations

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 s...

Mar 12, 202531 min

Decoder Ring | Truck Nutz (Encore)

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, in...

Mar 12, 202541 min

Supercommunicators | 2. How to Communicate Without Words

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 stu...

Mar 01, 202529 minEp. 2

Decoder Ring | Jerry Lewis’ Lost Holocaust Clown Movie

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 o...

Feb 26, 202559 min

Supercommunicators | 1. How to Talk to Anyone

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 artic...

Feb 22, 202532 minEp. 1

Introducing Supercommunicators

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Feb 22, 20251 min

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

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...

Feb 12, 202540 min

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

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 i...

Jan 29, 20251 hr 6 min

Decoder Ring | I am Tupperware, I Contain Multitudes

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 episo...

Jan 15, 202546 min

Introducing Planet Money: Can Money Buy Happiness?

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 ric...

Jan 01, 202530 min

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

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 inve...

Dec 18, 202453 min

Introducing SNAFU with Ed Helms

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dec 11, 202432 min

Decoder Ring | Mystery of the Mullet (Encore)

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 Anno...

Dec 04, 202454 min

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

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’...

Nov 20, 20241 hr 4 min

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

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...

Nov 10, 202444 min

Decoder Ring: The Wrongest Bird in Movie History

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 po...

Nov 07, 202452 min

Decoder Ring: Selling Out (Encore)

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...

Nov 04, 202453 min

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

(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 s...

Oct 30, 202449 min

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

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 recen...

Oct 23, 20241 hr 17 minSeason 10Ep. 6

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

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? 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. Subscr...

Oct 16, 20241 hr 5 minSeason 10Ep. 5

The Rise of Fox News | 4. Beacon of Truth

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? 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...

Oct 09, 20241 hr 5 minSeason 10Ep. 4

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

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? 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-f...

Oct 02, 202457 minSeason 10Ep. 3

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

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. 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 al...

Sep 25, 20241 hrSeason 10Ep. 2

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

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. 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 b...

Sep 18, 202457 minSeason 10Ep. 1

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

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 child...

Sep 11, 202444 min

Season 10 Trailer: The Rise of Fox News

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 i...

Sep 10, 20242 min

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

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 st...

Aug 28, 202451 min

Decoder Ring: The Hysteria Over Mass Hysteria

“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 ...

Aug 14, 202441 min

Decoder Ring: Standing Up for Sitting Down

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. Th...

Jul 31, 202435 min