News seems to move faster every week, making it difficult to get a solid grip on the stories that matter. Trying to keep tabs on every small thing might very well obscure the more important issues. With that in mind, I wanted to share a couple of podcasts that explore stories from the past in hopes that they will add context for understanding the present.
On Slate’s Slow Burn podcast, Leon Neyfakh and Andrew Parsons go to great lengths to retell and reframe stories from recent political history, and in doing so show that while history might not perfectly repeat itself, it still rhymes more than you might think. Season 1 managed to highlight fascinating new wrinkles in the Watergate affair and pairs nicely with the early months of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Donald Trump’s connections to Russia.
Season 2, which started in August and just recently wrapped up, tackled the sordid details surrounding Bill Clinton’s impeachment in a way that managed to drastically recast some of the key players in that, er, affair in light of the #metoo movement having altered the way we perceive power and sex.
Both seasons are works of superb investigative reporting, with the hosts’ research team going to great lengths to comb through untold archives and track down key movers and shakers who put the events under the microscope in greater context. It’s worth noting here that the bonus content afforded to Slate Plus members is wonderful. Loaded with tangents that couldn’t fit into the episodes, longer uncut versions of interviews, and information on how each episode came together; Slate Plus membership is well worth the price of admission.
Keeping with the theme of decades-old true-crime political potboilers, host Zac Stuart-Pontier and RFK researcher Bill Klaber’s podcast The RFK Tapes offers a serpentine dissection of the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.Bolstered by endless hours of rarely heard audio recordings, it dives headlong into the murky deep end of conspiracy theories that were almost entirely brand new to me.
Stuart-Pontier who, along with Marc Smerling, created the popular Crimetown podcast, is a talented storyteller, and for much of the series the order in which the “facts” are laid out casts considerable doubt on whether Sirhan Sirhan was the lone assassin of RFK. Eventually the focus pulls back to reveal a bigger, more complicated picture. Things still don’t add up, as demonstrated by a thoroughly divided live show audience late in the series.
The best example of where the two podcasts intersect is found in Slow Burn episode six, “Rabbit Holes.” It’s here that Neyfakh explores some of the most popular conspiracies related to Watergate. Before Watergate, it was somewhat easy to write off government conspiracies as being implausible because they relied on a highly organized deep state capable of keeping a lid on explosive secrets. Post-Watergate, though, the inner workings of the White House were laid bare to reveal an administration potentially capable of — and clearly petty enough — to have pulled off something similar and maybe even gotten away with it. Sure, the house of cards eventually came down for Nixon, but Watergate gave a lot of support to wingnuts who are still out there trying to find the woman in the polka dot dress who may or may not have been Sirhan Sirhan’s unwitting accomplice.
Time will tell if Robert Mueller’s investigation in fact topples Trump. But I’m hoping that Mueller’s findings will be airtight, giving as little room as possible for conspiracy theorist creeps to call them into question.
