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. Learn more about yo...
Jul 26, 2024•28 min•Season 9Ep. 9
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 la...
Jul 17, 2024•51 min
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 15, 2024•2 hr 35 min•Season 9Ep. 8
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 produc...
Jul 03, 2024•52 min•Season 9Ep. 7
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 ...
Jun 26, 2024•56 min•Season 9Ep. 6
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.) Subscribe to Slate Plus to immedi...
Jun 19, 2024•55 min•Season 9Ep. 5
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.) Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately unlock a...
Jun 12, 2024•58 min•Season 9Ep. 4
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. 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 mem...
Jun 05, 2024•57 min•Season 9Ep. 3
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 dire...
May 29, 2024•53 min•Season 9Ep. 2
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 988...
May 22, 2024•51 min•Season 9Ep. 1
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...
May 09, 2024•2 min
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 jala...
May 08, 2024•33 min
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 c...
Apr 24, 2024•42 min
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 rangi...
Apr 10, 2024•37 min
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 cl...
Mar 27, 2024•54 min
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 desig...
Mar 13, 2024•43 min
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 capital...
Feb 28, 2024•44 min
Hosted by Christina Cauterucci. Coming in May 2024. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feb 22, 2024•1 min
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 e...
Feb 14, 2024•34 min
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 Jon...
Dec 21, 2023•56 min•Season 6Ep. 13
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 ed...
Dec 14, 2023•58 min•Season 6Ep. 12
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 o...
Dec 07, 2023•41 min•Season 6Ep. 11
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 narrativ...
Nov 30, 2023•51 min•Season 6Ep. 10
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 ...
Nov 22, 2023•57 min•Season 6Ep. 9
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 t...
Nov 15, 2023•47 min
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—...
Nov 08, 2023•38 min
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 Wil...
Nov 01, 2023•41 min
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 R...
Oct 25, 2023•42 min
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 ...
Oct 18, 2023•46 min
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 pr...
Oct 06, 2023•55 min•Season 5Ep. 14
