{"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 | Who Was Lonelygirl15?","slug":"decoder-ring-who-was-lonelygirl15","published_at":"2026-04-08T07:50:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/slow-burn-474574/decoder-ring-who-was-lonelygirl15","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/slow-burn-474574","url":"https://shows.acast.com/slow-burn/episodes/decoder-ring-who-was-lonelygirl15","audio_url":"https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/6965759d79fe7d554545528a/e/69d5211b4e0183696b4546b5/media.mp3","summary":"In the summer of 2006, a teenage girl began posting video diaries to a then-new site called YouTube under the handle lonelygirl15. Within weeks she was a phenomenon—even though no one knew the truth of who she really was. The frenzied quest to change that, to solve the mystery of lonelygirl15, would ultimately land her on the front page of newspapers and the covers of magazines. Twenty years on, lonelygirl15 is both an artifact of an earlier online era and an origin point for the internet as we know it: a place full of video diaries, parasocial relationships, influencers, hyper-engaged fandoms, and the knowledge that you can’t always believe your eyes. In this episode, you’ll hear from some of the people who investigated lonelygirl15 way back in 2006: culture critic Virginia Heffernan, who writes the Substack Magic + Loss and co-hosts the podcast Omnishambles ; entertainment journalist Richard Rushfield of The Ankler ; Emmy Award-winning producer Jenni Powell ; and one-time cybersleuth Chris Patterson . We also speak with the people involved in making lonelygirl15: Miles Beckett , Mesh Flinders , Jessica Rose Phillipps, and Amanda Goodfried.  This episode was written by Willa Paskin and Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s Supervising Producer. Decoder Ring is also produced by Willa Paskin, Katie Shepherd, and Max Freedman. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Thank you to Greg Goodfried, Matt Foremski, and Tom Foremski. Special thanks to Ryan Broderick and Grant Irving of the podcast Panic World , who introduced Willa to the lonelygirl15 story on a recent episode of their show and suggested it might make a good topic for Decoder Ring. 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…","meta_description":"In the summer of 2006, a teenage girl began posting video diaries to a then-new site called YouTube under the handle lonelygirl15. Within weeks she was a…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3530,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/slow-burn-474574/episodes/decoder-ring-who-was-lonelygirl15/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-who-was-lonelygirl15.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}