slow_burn_pod

Thanks for listening! We definitely understood going into the project that there might be a few parallels between the Watergate era and right now -- our initial motive for starting the podcast was that we kept hearing people on the news reference Watergate, and we thought it'd be worth delving deep into what really happened. But then as we worked on the show we kept bumping into these extremely specific, sometimes downright uncanny echoes, and when the episodes started coming out, we noticed that people were responding to them.

At that point we had to make a decision about how explicit we wanted to be, and how much we wanted to try to actively seek out parallels. We decided a) that we wouldn't be explicit at all, because it would get annoying hearing me say "And that's kinda like Trump!" every 10 minutes, and b) that we would NOT try to find parallels that didn't present themselves to us naturally.

I think part of the reason the show resonated with listeners is that it was a way to think through / process the Trump administration without hearing Trump's name.

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Thank you! We read books, watch documentaries, dig through grand jury transcripts etc. We publish a full bibliography for each episode on Slate.com

If I may throw something on the fire, so to speak, I'm curious what you all think after watching this teaser we just posted for next week's episode about Linda Tripp: https://twitter.com/Slate/status/1037310348158791680

I've gotten briefly peeved when people in DC have tried to stunt on me re: S2E1 by pointing out there's no movie theater in the Pentagon City Mall. They are right, there isn't -- but there was! http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/37256

Other than that no one has criticized the show tbh

Hello Peter! Thanks so much for being so vocally enthusiastic about the show -- it means a lot. This question of whether Clinton's enemies were acting sincerely or opportunistically/cynically is one I think about a lot -- in a way it's the central question of the whole story. I think a) the answer is probably different depending on who we're talking about, and b) I bet the two motivations get mixed together in such a way that even the people being motivated by them don't really know what's going on. I will say that I was surprised to find how much of the Clintons' problems during the first year arose from decisions that made them LOOK like they were hiding something, even when they weren't. I think that made Clinton's critics sincerely suspicious, even when there was no "there there."