‘Slow Burn’ Returns With Two Seasons On Briggs & Fox News As Slate Targets “Disillusioned” Political Audience

Peter White
·4 min read
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EXCLUSIVE: Slow Burn is one of the most popular podcast franchises with seasons on Watergate and the impeachment of President Clinton as well as a TV adaptation on MGM+.

Slate is now supersizing the audio series by ordering two seasons at once. The company is preparing a seasons on the Briggs Initiative—the country’s first statewide referendum on gay rights as well as Fox News.

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The idea is the two seasons will appeal to both long-term Slow Burn fans as well as new listeners who are interested in news and politics but are looking for a different way into the discussions as the country heads closer to a Presidential election.

Derek John, Executive Producer of Narrative Podcasts at Slate, told Deadline that these stories will appeal to both the “most politically-engaged” listeners as well as “those who have become disillusioned with day-to-day coverage”.

“Our goal with Slow Burn is to tell stories about the biggest moments in history in a way that is eye-opening and approachable for the people who are less familiar with the material, and surprising for the people who already know something about it—or even lived through it,” he said. “Both of these seasons highlight issues that are important to, and resonate with, our current moment and election cycle, but we’re tackling them in a different way than you’ll see on cable news. We think both of these stories will appeal to the most politically-engaged listeners and those who have become disillusioned with day-to-day coverage and want a deeper and more historically informed perspective on how we got here.”

Slow Burn started with Watergate, followed by the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, a season on Biggie and Tupac, David Duke, The Road to the Iraq War, the LA Riots, Roe v. Wade and Clarence Thomas.

Season 9, which will feature six episodes, launches on May 22. It will be hosted by Slate’s Christina Cauterucci and will revisit the Briggs Initiative.

Four decades before Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law banned discussion of sexual orientation and gender in public schools, LGBTQ teachers in California were the target of a campaign to ban them from public education entirely—and fire those who acknowledged their existence. This battle over classrooms and identity tested the new political power of two groups that were ascendant in the late ’70s: religious conservatives and the gay and lesbian community.

It also captured the national spotlight, drawing the participation of everyone from Ronald Reagan to Harvey Milk. The season will feature well-known activists and politicians like former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, Cleve Jones, a Harvey Milk protegee who interned for him at City Hall and went on to start the AIDS Memorial Quilt, Anne Kronenberg, another Harvey Milk protegee who ran his winning election campaign and worked alongside him at City Hall, and Tom Ammiano, a former California legislator who later became famous for telling Arnold Schwarzenegger to “kiss my gay ass”

It will also feature lesser-known characters in queer history, and the lesser-known subplots like a bomb plot from Weather Underground and some alleged shady dealings by Jerry Falwell as well as some R-rated anecdotes from gay San Francisco in the ’70s.

Christina Cauterucci said, “It’s a story of profound fear and anger among LGBTQ people, and of cynical politicians stoking a moral panic to further a repressive right-wing agenda. But it’s also a story of unlikely coalitions, intra-community drama, joy, sex, and the queer cultural ferment of late-‘70s San Francisco. It is exactly the story I want to be working on this election season, and I think it’ll be exactly what listeners will want to hear.”

Season 10, which will also feature six episodes, will premiere in September and is still in early production. The season will be hosted by Josh Levin, who hosted the David Duke season, and will tackle Fox News, focusing on its rise between the 2000 and 2004 elections and the scramble on the Left to try and combat it.

Levin said, “Fox News is a perfect Slow Burn subject, one of the defining institutions of modern American life. Given its outsized role in the 2024 race we feel it’s the perfect time to look back on where it came from and how it became a cultural and political force.”

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