{"podcast":{"title":"Slow Burn","slug":"slow-burn-474574","podcast_index_feed_id":474574,"rss_url":"https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/6965759d79fe7d554545528a","website_url":"https://slate.com/slowburn","image_url":"https://assets.pippa.io/shows/6965759d79fe7d554545528a/1778157374914-ae3ee4b6-49a1-4ca8-b5ab-9ddd01fce140.jpeg","author":"Slate Audio","episode_count":226,"summary":"Slow Burn illuminates America’s most consequential moments, making sense of the past to better understand the present. Through archival tape and first-person interviews, the series uncovers the surprising events and little-known characters lurking within the biggest stories of our time. Join Slate Plus to unlock full, ad-free access to Slow Burn and your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe from the Slow Burn show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen. Season 11: Becoming Justice Gorsuch How Neil Gorsuch laid the foundation for a SCOTUS supermajority and then became its most unexpected wild card. Season 10: The Rise of Fox News How a cable news channel became a cultural and political force—and how a whole bunch of people rose up to try and stop it. Season 9: Gays Against Briggs A nationwide moral panic, a California legislator who rode the anti-gay wave, and the LGBTQ+ people who stepped up and came out to try and stop him. Season 8: Becoming Justice Thomas Where Clarence Thomas came from, how he rose to power, and how he’s brought the rest of us along with him, whether we like it or not. Winner of the Pod…","last_synced_at":"2026-07-01T18:18:26.361960+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/slow-burn-474574"},"episode":{"title":"Decoder Ring | Making Coal Cute Again","slug":"decoder-ring-making-coal-cute-again","published_at":"2026-02-11T08:50:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/slow-burn-474574/decoder-ring-making-coal-cute-again","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/slow-burn-474574","url":"https://shows.acast.com/slow-burn/episodes/decoder-ring-making-coal-cute-again","audio_url":"https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/6965759d79fe7d554545528a/e/698b9023ba80cf1ecb1829a2/media.mp3","summary":"Three weeks ago, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum shared an unusual tweet : a cartoon image of himself with his arm draped around a giant, anthropomorphized lump of coal. This piece of coal has big googly eyes and a smudge of a nose, and is wearing a safety vest and a hard hat. He is, frankly, adorable—and he has a name: Coalie. When Coalie first appeared on the internet, he went viral—ridiculed on social media, in newsletters, and even on late night talk shows . And that’s because this big-eyed, cute piece of coal was widely understood to be coal propaganda, a tool to soften the coal industry’s image. But the truth about Coalie is more complicated. His origins tell a story about what it’s like for federal employees to try to do their work while navigating the Trump administration’s agenda. Coalie may be widely seen as a mascot for coal mining, but that’s not what he was made for. In this episode, you’ll hear from Simone Randolph, Director of Communications for the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) ; Sara Eckert, formerly of OSMRE; Slate staff writer Nitish Pahwa ; and Leah Stokes , who researches climate and energy policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara and co-hosts the podcast A Matter of Degrees . Thank you to Daniel Raimi, Tony Ho Tran, and Hannah Northey. This episode was written by Willa Paskin and Evan Chung and produced by Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. Our show is also produced by Max Freedman and Katie Shepherd. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281. Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring an…","meta_description":"Three weeks ago, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum shared an unusual tweet : a cartoon image of himself with his arm draped around a giant, anthr…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2706,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/slow-burn-474574/episodes/decoder-ring-making-coal-cute-again/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/slow-burn-474574/decoder-ring-making-coal-cute-again.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}