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 funnil...
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 i...
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 o...
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 ...
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 Fo...
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 ...
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 t...
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 on...
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...
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. Duri...