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On today’s episode, Rachelle and Madison chronicle the long, complicated life of Shrek online. They argue that the film, which premiered in 2001, was primed to become an internet meme before Shrek fans even got their hands on it. And then they explain all the different iterations, some funny and some downright creepy, of Shrek content that have kept the green ogre alive on the web for 20 years. You can check out the Shrek syllabus here. Podcast production by Daniel Schroeder and Derek John. Support ICYMI and listen to the show with zero ads. Sign up to become a Slate Plus member for just $1 for your first month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last week, a hacker group called DarkSide shut down the Colonial Pipeline, which supplies 45 percent of the fuel consumed on the East Coast. Gas prices skyrocketed, people started hoarding gas, and DarkSide walked away with over $4 million in Bitcoin. How did they do it? And what makes this hack different from those we’ve seen before? Guest: David Uberti, cybersecurity reporter at the Wall Street Journal Host Lizzie O’Leary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whoopi Goldberg’s early views, Barack Obama’s youthful indiscretions, Diahann Carroll’s big break. Those stories and thousands more have been preserved by The HistoryMakers, a video archive of notable African Americans. On today’s episode of A Word, Jason Johnson speaks with the founder and president of The HistoryMakers, Julieanna Richardson, about the project’s mission, and the urgency of preserving Black history during Covid crisis. Guest: Julieanna Richardson, founder and president of The HistoryMakers  Podcast production by Ahyiana Angel and Jasmine Ellis You can skip all the ads in A Word by joining Slate Plus. Sign up now at slate.com/awordplus for just $1 for your first month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For a musical project that’s synonymous with deceit, Milli Vanilli sold an awful lot of records. They also have quite a legacy: a blend of pop, dance and rap that now seems commonplace but was still relatively novel in 1989. If you’ve danced to Europop that fronts like hip-hop, you’re living in a world Milli Vanilli helped create.   In this episode of Hit Parade, Chris Molanphy breaks down the history of Milli Vanilli mastermind Frank Farian’s musical career: from his days with Boney M, a hit-making, half-real, half-fake group that was a precursor to his later scheme; to his enlistment of European model–dancers Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan to be the faux-frontpeople of Milli Vanilli. From MTV News to Behind the Music, the Milli Vanilli story has been told and retold. But the Billboard chart feats achieved by Rob and Fab, and their accomplices, reveal just how addicted America was to their music—and maybe, how they won that Grammy. Hit Parade episodes are now split into two parts, released two weeks apart.

Blake Bailey gained fame for telling the stories of famous men. But before that, he was a beloved middle school teacher—who went on to have questionable sexual relationships with several of his former eighth grade students. When his biography of Phillip Roth was published this spring, some former students started to speak out about their experiences with Bailey. A few revealed that after years of staying in touch with them as a mentor of sorts, he had made unwelcome sexual advances. Former student Eve Crawford Payton says he raped her when she was 22 years old. On today’s episode, Slate news director Susan Matthews is first joined by colleagues Josh Levin and Molly Olmstead, who were her collaborators on “Mr. Bailey’s Class.” They unpack what it was like to work on the piece, which stories about sexual assault get told, and what that means for journalism as a mechanism for obtaining justice. Later in the show, Matthews is joined by Eve Crawford Peyton. Peyton wrote an essay for Slate, detailing her experien

This week, we're highlighting a few excerpts from this season's Slate Plus episodes—interviews with Ann Curry, Slate writers and editors who blogged about the war in 2003, and people who personally knew Ahmad Chalabi. To listen to these interviews, learn more about the making of this season, skip all the ads, and support Slow Burn, sign up for Slate Plus now. It's only $1 for your first month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the past week, while the violence between Israel and Palestine has escalated, a separate battle has accelerated on social media, one fought with rocket emojis instead of rockets and celebrities like Israeli actress Gal Gadot and Palestinian-American model Bella Hadid getting involved. If you don’t post, are you tacitly anti-Palestine? Anti-semitic? If you do post and you fumble some of your history, are you nothing but a hashtag activist? (What about if you get right?) In this episode, Madison and Rachelle survey a week’s worth of controversial celebrity statements and the evolution of one particular viral infographic to ask who these memes and Instagram posts really serve and how to avoid the 2021 equivalent of posting black squares. Podcast production by Daniel Schroeder and Derek John. Support ICYMI and listen to the show with zero ads. Sign up to become a Slate Plus member for just $1 for your first month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today’s episode, Rachelle and Madison discuss the latest news about Chrissy Teigen and Courtney Stodden. Earlier this week, Stodden, who rose to fame as a teenager in the early 2010s after marrying middle-aged character actor Doug Hutchison, came forward saying that they had been harassed on Twitter by Teigen, who sent tweets wishing for their death. Teigen has since apologized, but this news highlighted the disgusting ways people used to talk about young girls on the internet, and how Teigen’s online presence has never been as kind and lovable as she’d want you to believe. Podcast production by Daniel Schroeder and Derek John. Support ICYMI and listen to the show with zero ads. Sign up to become a Slate Plus member for just $1 for your first month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Serum Institute of India was supposed to supply vaccines not just to India, but to the entire Global South. Now, with cases surging, there aren’t nearly enough vaccines for India’s population, not to mention the many countries that are relying on it. How did such a successful institution come up so short? And what are the costs of that failure? Guest: Samanth Subramanian, senior reporter at Quartz Host Lizzie O’Leary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility climbed back on the best-seller charts after George Floyd’s murder. On today’s episode of A Word, she talks with Jason Johnson about what white allyship looks like after Derek Chauvin’s conviction, and the challenges of building an anti-racist society. The two originally spoke at the Crosscut Festival, an online conference that took a hard look at the people, policy and events that shape our lives.  Guest: Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility  Podcast production by Ahyiana Angel and Jasmine Ellis You can skip all the ads in A Word by joining Slate Plus. Sign up now at slate.com/awordplus for just $1 for your first month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the year leading up the invasion, George W. Bush sketched his justification for the war: good vs. evil, us vs. them. The president wasn’t interested in fleshing out the details beyond that, but lots of other people were. How did intellectuals, on both the right and left, help bolster the Bush administration’s case for war? And how much responsibility should they bear for one of America’s deadliest mistakes? Season 5 of Slow Burn is produced by Noreen Malone, Jayson De Leon, and Sophie Summergrad. Mixing by Merritt Jacob. Slate Plus members get bonus episodes of Slow Burn and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rachelle and Madison discuss Elon Musk’s episode of Saturday Night Live. Specifically they break down the ”Gen Z Hospital” sketch, where everybody seems to be speaking in internet slang, and the backlash to it. Rachelle explains how all the language used isn’t just from the internet or from Zoomers but from African-American Vernacular English. This isn’t a new thing, of course—white Americans have been appropriating Black culture for as long as America has been around—but as this Paper magazine article by Rob Dozier points out, the internet has made it particularly easy for those words to lose their original context. Podcast Production by Daniel Schroeder and Derek John. Support ICYMI and listen to the show with zero ads. Sign up to become a Slate Plus member for just $1 for your first month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Space begins some sixty-two miles above the surface of the Earth, but for most people it feels far more distant. Cady and Andrew talk with Ellen Stofan, Under Secretary for Science and Research at the Smithsonian, about bringing space closer to people. Also, space debris in the news, the problem with rotating space stations, and a new Sounds of Space. This week’s Sounds of Space from the great folks at System Sounds. Hosts Cady Coleman & Andrew Maynard Twitter Interplanetary Initiative: @II_ASU Cady Coleman: @Astro_Cady Andrew Maynard: @2020science Ellen Stofan: @EllenStofan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of Let’s Workflow It features Deryck Mitchelson – one of the leaders taking on the greatest workflow challenge of our time – the effort to vaccinate millions of citizens from COVID-19. As Director of Information Security for NHS National Services Scotland, Deryck manages his nation’s contact tracing and vaccination systems, and shares his unique perspective on the systems and technology necessary to turn vaccines into vaccinations. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today’s episode, Rachelle and Madison discuss Facebook upholding their ban of Donald Trump from their platform—sort of. Then they interview someone about their own experience getting banned: legal journalist Rachel Stone, who was banned from Twitter after she jokingly threatened the man who cautions you to take a break from scrolling through TikTok. Finally, they debut their new segment Galaxy Brain, where they share some of the wildest theories on the internet, starting with a listener letter about the word cheugy. Podcast production by Daniel Schroeder and Derek John. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today’s episode of A Word, Jason Johnson is joined by Emmy-nominated actor William Jackson Harper. Fans might know him as indecisive professor Chidi from The Good Place. But he’s back on screens this spring in Barry Jenkins’ The Underground Railroad. The series is based on the Pulitzer prize-winning novel from Colson Whitehead. Harper talks about the upcoming Amazon Prime series, playing Chidi on The Good Place, and his role as a rom-com star in We Broke Up. Guest: William Jackson Harper, Emmy-nominated actor. Podcast production by Ahyiana Angel and Jasmine Ellis You can skip all the ads in A Word by joining Slate Plus. Sign up now at slate.com/awordplus for just $1 for your first month.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The question of Donald Trump’s banned account--to keep it blocked, or reinstate it--is one of the toughest that Facebook has ever faced. But the social network had a plan: punt the decision to its newly minted Oversight Board, a semi-independent “Supreme Court” tasked with making hard decisions about what content stays up, and what comes down.  Did that plan just backfire? Guest: Kate Klonick, professor at St. John’s University School of Law  Host Lizzie O’Leary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To start a war of choice, you need a casus belli—a case for war. Why did the Bush administration settle on weapons of mass destruction as their case for war? And how did they make that case to the American people? Season 5 of Slow Burn is produced by Noreen Malone, Jayson De Leon, and Sophie Summergrad. Mixing by Merritt Jacob. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today’s episode, Madison and Rachelle answer a couple of listener questions in a new segment we’re calling Read Receipts. First, they explore the origins of the “this shit bussin’—sheesh” meme that’s all over TikTok and why teens are getting their parents to do it. Then Rachelle digs into the drama currently embroiling the fan-fiction website Archive of Our Own, explaining whether the nonprofit’s latest fundraising drive is a scam (it’s not), and why the site both is and isn’t a safe haven for marginalized fans. If you'd like to read more about Sexy Times With Wangxian you can do that here. Podcast production by Daniel Schroeder and Derek John. Support ICYMI and listen to the show with zero ads. Sign up to become a Slate Plus member for just $1 for your first month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More than half a million bits of deadly space junk are racing around our planet. What do we do about that? Cady and Andrew talk to NASA astronaut Mark Brown about the problem of orbital debris. Also, the passing of legendary astronaut Michael Collins, daffodils, the sci-fi of Toby Weston, and a new Sounds of Space. Check out this week’s Sounds of Space here. Hosts Cady Coleman & Andrew Maynard Twitter Interplanetary Initiative: @II_ASU Cady Coleman: @Astro_Cady Andrew Maynard: @2020science Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices