Slate Presents: The Queen | The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth
By Slate Podcasts
The people and struggles that changed America—one year at a time. In each episode, host Josh Levin explores a story you may have forgotten, or one you’ve never heard of before. What were the moments that transformed politics, culture, science, religion, and more? And how does the nation’s past shape our present?
Latest episode
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1990: The Angry Death of Kimberly Bergalis
A young woman claimed she got HIV from her dentist. Was she right? -
1990: Art on Trial
Inside the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition that sparked a First Amendment showdown in Cincinnati. -
One Year: 1990 - Bush vs. Broccoli
When the president declared war on a vegetable, the country lost its mind. -
1990: Mandrake the Magician
How a single dad with a secret identity took on Big Tobacco. -
1990: Pizzastroika
As the Cold War reached its climax, Pizza Hut got tangled up in geopolitics—and made a lot of dough. -
1955: The Hiroshima Maidens
A decade after the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb, 25 Japanese women put their lives in the hands of American surgeons. -
1955: The Cutter Incident
In 1955, the polio vaccine was rightly heralded as a miracle. A medical mystery threatened to derail it. -
1955: Siberia, USA
The Communist-hunting housewives who spawned a far-right conspiracy theory about an American gulag. -
1955: The Weather Girls
In the 1950s, women weathercasters were idolized and lusted over. They were also seen as a major threat. -
1955: The Crockett Craze
How Walt Disney created the first baby-boom phenomenon totally by accident.
