Slow Burn

Few inspirational phrases are quoted more often than Mahatma Gandhi’s “Be the change you want to see in the world.” It shows up on t-shirts, bumper stickers, even tattooed on people’s bodies. Life coaches, leadership trainers, and American presidents constantly cite it. There is one problem with this quotation, however: Gandhi never said it. And the story of how the “be the change” actually came t...

In the early 1970s, a jigsaw puzzle of a cheerful, young, naked, fat woman known only as “Bridget in the Buff” arrived in stores all over America. It was just the first of countless Bridget-related merchandise that would be sold around the world for the next decade: calendars , playing cards, coloring books, cookbooks , and much more. Bridget was everywhere. But who was she? In this episode of Dec...

Podcasts are everywhere. They’re more popular and influential than they’ve ever been. But at the same time, what makes a podcast a “podcast” has never been more confusing. Until recently, the definition of “podcast” was clear: audio distributed over the internet. A podcast was something you listened to, not something you watched. But now, almost all of the most popular podcasts have video, too. An...

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 , originally released in 2022, on the weird world of PSAs and very special episode...

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 first of two episodes, originally released in 2022, we take a look at PSAs and their strange afterlife through the lens...

The sun has always been a hot topic. For centuries, we’ve flip-flopped over whether our health depends on soaking up its rays—or shielding ourselves from them. The current conventional wisdom is clear: Avoid sunburns at all costs, using shade, hats, long sleeves, and the highest SPF sunscreen your drugstore has to offer. But in a historical sense, that advice is pretty new. Not long ago, doctors t...

Most of us use GPS—the Global Positioning System—on a daily basis: to find our location when we’re driving, running, shopping, dating, and so much more. But GPS is even more important, and more vulnerable, than you think. In the last few years, GPS interference has been reported all over the world, from war zones to shipping routes to public squares. What was once the fanciful plot of a Bond movie...

Here at Slow Burn, we explore the events and people who shaped America as we know it today. As the country marks its 250th birthday this summer, we want to introduce you to the first installment of First America , a great podcast series that explores a truly consequential moment from our nation’s past.  We have been told the American Revolution was fought over taxation and representation. Fir...

It seems like the only time you hear about new statues these days is when something goes horribly wrong. Unfortunate bronze renditions of Lucille Ball, Cristiano Ronaldo, Dwayne Wade, and many others are always going viral, becoming a fixture of late-night shows and mocking comment sections. Is the internet too harsh a critic? Or is American statuary a total bust? In this episode of Decoder Ring,...

In Australia, no wedding or school dance is complete without the Nutbush, Australia’s unofficial national dance. The Nutbush – a simple line dance to the song “Nutbush City Limits,” by Ike and Tina Turner – has become as stereotypically Australian as kangaroos, boomerangs, and Vegemite. And yet, hardly anyone outside of Australia even knows the Nutbush exists. Here at Decoder Ring, we certainly di...

In our final episode, it’s time to talk about Neil Gorsuch and the future of SCOTUS. Host Susan Matthews enlists Slate’s jurisprudence team—Amicus co-hosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern—to discuss Gorsuch’s key rulings to date, his unpredictability, and how this textualist will shape this court (and our country) for decades to come. Want more Slow Burn? Join Slate Plus to binge every episo...

When Justice Antonin Scalia died in February of 2016, the Supreme Court appeared to be headed for a 5-4 liberal majority. Instead, a staggering blockade by Senate Republicans and a shocking electoral upset helped steal a seat and clear the way for today’s conservative supermajority. In our second episode, we examine Neil Gorsuch’s politically fraught path to power and his time on the bench so far,...

Neil Gorsuch may not be the most well-known justice on the Supreme Court, but he might just be the key to understanding how and why the current court has come to wield so much power over our day-to-day lives. In our first episode, host Susan Matthews examines Gorsuch’s early years, what he took away from his iconoclastic mother’s rocky tenure in the Reagan administration, and how his worldview was...

Coming May 13: Host Susan Matthews traces the rise of Neil Gorsuch, from his formative years as a young conservative through his nomination to a “stolen seat” on the U.S. Supreme Court. Through interviews, legal analysis, and archival research, the mild-mannered Westerner emerges as the court’s most unpredictable—and most important—sitting justice. Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subsc...

We are lucky to get fantastic questions from our listeners here at Decoder Ring, and in this episode, we’re going to open up our mailbag to answer three of them. What are the origins of an eerie horror film string motif? Why do companies insist on telling callers to “listen closely” to menu options that could not possibly have changed? And when did we start using the indispensable eye roll? In thi...

Money is everywhere. Money influences just about everything. We think about money all the time. But how much do we really know about it? In this episode of Decoder Ring, we explore the obscure historical forces that make our money what it is and behave the way it does. We ask two simple-sounding questions with surprising answers: Why is our money called the dollar—and where are those dollars reall...

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, l...

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 Con...

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 cree...

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 an...

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—r...

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 Spac...

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 Dus...

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 “h...

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...