Shows / Slow Burn
Slow Burn
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.
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Episodes
- Slow Burn
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…
- Slow Burn
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…
- Slow Burn
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…
- Slow Burn
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…
- Slow Burn
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…
Slow BurnThe 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…
Slow BurnThe 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…
Slow BurnThe 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…
Slow BurnThe 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…
Slow BurnThe 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…
Slow BurnThe 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…
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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…
Slow BurnSeason 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…
- Slow Burn
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…
- Slow Burn
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…
- Slow Burn
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…
- Slow Burn
Gays Against Briggs | The Story Behind Our Cover Art
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…
- Slow Burn
Decoder Ring: The Secret Life of Lawn Ornaments
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…
- Slow Burn
Gays Against Briggs | Tribeca Festival Live Show
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…
Slow BurnGays Against Briggs | 7. Turn Around. Fight Back.
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…
Slow BurnGays Against Briggs | 6. The Murders at City Hall
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…
Slow BurnGays Against Briggs | 5. Strange Bedfellows
As Election Day approached, the campaign to defeat Proposition 6 faced formidable odds. John Briggs’ fundraising juggernaut was churning out cash, and public…
Slow BurnGays Against Briggs | 4. You Must Come Out
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…
Slow BurnGays Against Briggs | 3. Harvey Milk vs. the Machine
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…
Slow BurnGays Against Briggs | 2. Defend Our Children
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…
Slow BurnGays Against Briggs | 1. A Hotbed of Homosexuality
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…
Slow BurnSeason 9 Trailer: Gays Against Briggs
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…
- Slow Burn
Decoder Ring: How the Jalapeño Lost Its Heat
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…
- Slow Burn
Decoder Ring: Making Real Music for a Fake Band
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…
- Slow Burn
Decoder Ring: Can the “Bookazine” Save Magazines?
Magazines have fallen on hard times – especially the weekly news, fashion, and celebrity mags that once dominated newsstands. The revenue from magazine racks…
- Slow Burn
Decoder Ring: Andrew Wyeth's Secret Nudes (Encore)
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…
- Slow Burn
Decoder Ring: Why Stylists Rule the Red Carpet
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…
Slow BurnDecoder Ring: The Gen X Soda That Was Just "OK"
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…
Slow BurnAnnouncing Slow Burn Season 9
Hosted by Christina Cauterucci. Coming in May 2024. Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at…
Slow BurnDecoder Ring: Why Do So Many Coffee Shops Look the Same?
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…
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One Year: 1990 | 5. The Angry Death of Kimberly Bergalis
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…
- Slow Burn
One Year: 1990 | 4. Art on Trial
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…
- Slow Burn
One Year: 1990 | 3. Bush vs. Broccoli
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…
- Slow Burn
One Year: 1990 | 2. Mandrake the Magician
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…
- Slow Burn
One Year: 1990 | 1. Pizzastroika
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…
- Slow Burn
Decoder Ring: The Forgotten Video Game About Slavery
In 1992, a Minnesota-based software company known for its educational hit The Oregon Trail released another simulation-style game to school districts across…
- Slow Burn
Decoder Ring: The Dating Manual Unlike Any Other
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…
- Slow Burn
Decoder Ring: Mailbag - The Recorder, Limos, and “Baby on Board” Signs
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…
- Slow Burn
Decoder Ring: When Art Pranksters Invaded Melrose Place
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…
- Slow Burn
Decoder Ring: The Fast Decline of the Slow Dance
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…
- Slow Burn
One Year: 1955 | 6. The Hiroshima Maidens
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…
- Slow Burn
One Year: 1955 | 5. The Cutter Incident
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…
- Slow Burn
One Year: 1955 | 4. Siberia, USA
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…
- Slow Burn
One Year: 1955 | 3. The Weather Girls
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…
- Slow Burn
One Year: 1955 | 2. The Crockett Craze
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…
- Slow Burn
One Year: 1955 | 1. The Team Nobody Would Play
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…
- Slow Burn
Decoder Ring: Think Catchphrases Are Dead? Eat My Shorts.
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…
- Slow Burn
Decoder Ring: The Quest for a Homemade Hovercraft
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…
- Slow Burn
Decoder Ring: A Brief History of Making Out
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…
- Slow Burn
Decoder Ring: The Great Parmesan Cheese Debate
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…
- Slow Burn
Decoder Ring: What's Really Going On Inside a Mosh Pit?
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…
Slow BurnS8 Live Announcement & Bonus Conversation
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…
Slow BurnBecoming Justice Thomas | 4. A National Disgrace
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…
Slow BurnBecoming Justice Thomas | 3. I’m Their Guy
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…
Slow BurnBecoming Justice Thomas | 2. Smiling Faces
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…