Slate is an online magazine that covers current affairs, politics, and culture in the United States. It was created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. In 2004, it was purchased by The Washington Post Company, and since 2008 has been managed by The Slate Group, an online publishing entity created by Graham Holdings. Slate is based in New York City, with an additional office in Washington, D.C.
Mike Pesca is an American radio journalist and podcaster based in New York City. He is the host of the daily podcast, The Gist, and the editor of Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History.
Allison Hagendorf is an American music journalist and television personality, known for hosting the New Year's Eve broadcast from Times Square from 2012 to 2019. She was also the Global Head of Rock for Spotify.
Dana Shawn Stevens is an American film critic who writes for Slate. She is also a cohost of the magazine's weekly cultural podcast, the Culture Gabfest. She is the author of a 2022 book about Buster Keaton and the 20th century titled Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century.
Walter Kamau Bell is an American stand-up comic and television host. He has hosted the CNN series United Shades of America since 2016, and hosted FXX television series Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell from 2012 to 2013. He is the host of the live radio show and podcast Kamau Right Now on KALW, and also co-hosts the podcasts Denzel Washington Is The Greatest Actor Of All Time Period with Kevin Avery (comedian) and Politically Re-Active with Hari Kondabolu. In 2022, Bell directed and produced the documentary miniseries We Need to Talk About Cosby.
The Slate Political Gabfest is an American political podcast by Slate magazine that covers topics on current politics and issues featuring David Plotz, Emily Bazelon and John Dickerson.
Theodor Capitani von KurnatowskiIII, known professionally as Theo Von, is an American stand-up comedian, podcaster, actor, influencer, and former reality television personality. He is the host of the This Past Weekend podcast.
Jessica Ebenstein Grose is an American journalist, editor, and novelist. She is the author of the 2012 novel Sad Desk Salad, the co-author of the 2009 book LOVE, MOM: Poignant, Goofy, Brilliant Messages from Home, and the 2016 novel Soulmates. Since October 2021, Grose has written for The New York Times opinion section.
Gimlet Media LLC is a digital media company and podcast network, focused on producing narrative podcasts and headquartered in Brooklyn, New York. The company was founded in 2014 by Alex Blumberg and Matthew Lieber, who served as the company's CEO and president respectively until Lieber stepped down in 2022. In February 2019, Spotify announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Gimlet for $230 million. In 2023, Spotify announced that they were merging Gimlet and Parcast into Spotify Studios.
Vanessa Zoltan is a humanist chaplain who describes herself as an "atheist chaplain". She is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, and holds a BA in English and writing from Washington University in St. Louis, and a MS in nonprofit management from the University of Pennsylvania. She has been called one of "few" feminist humanist chaplains in the world.
Nazanin Rafsanjani is an American television and radio producer. She was the head of new show development for Gimlet Media until 2020, and before that served as Gimlet's creative director and a senior producer for The Rachel Maddow Show.
Politically Re-Active is a political comedy podcast hosted by comedians W. Kamau Bell and Hari Kondabolu. The left-leaning show, organized around guest interviews, launched in June 2016 and initially focused on the 2016 United States presidential election, but continued through October 2017. After a hiatus, it resumed in October 2020.
Political podcasts are podcasts that focus on contemporary politics and current events. Most political podcasts maintain a connection with an existing media source such as a newspaper or magazine. They aim to inform or entertain or advocate a cause, usually for progressive causes, although there are some conservative podcasts. They are often cost-effective to produce, requiring minimal computer technology to operate. Their audiences are generally persons in interested in current events, and programs usually have a duration of a half hour to an hour.
Science Vs is a science podcast created and hosted by Wendy Zukerman. The show takes a myth-busting approach to controversial topics and current events, with fact checking and research of the scientific literature, as well as interviewing relevant experts. A typical show will have over a hundred citations and involve background interviews of dozens of scientists in addition to the scientists who speak on the show.
Andy Bowers is an American radio journalist and podcaster, and is the co-founder and chief content officer of Panoply Media, a podcasting production and services company owned by The Slate Group. After working as a White House and foreign correspondent for NPR during the 1990s, Bowers joined Slate in 2003, and founded the magazine's podcasts in 2005. The growth of the Slate podcasting network led the magazine's parent company to create Panoply in 2015.
Slow Burn is a narrative podcast produced by Slate Plus, a division of Slate. The first two seasons of the podcast are hosted by Leon Neyfakh; the third and sixth seasons of the show are hosted by Joel D. Anderson; and the fourth and fifth seasons are hosted by Josh Levin and Noreen Malone, respectively.
Slate's Culture Gabfest is a New York-based podcast from Slate hosted by Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens and Julia Turner. The show has been positively reviewed in The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The A.V. Club, and Kill Your Darlings, which described the show as the "distilled ... pleasures, the prowess and, indeed, the rigours of sophisticated cultural critique".
A music podcast is a genre of podcasts covering topics related to music and musicians, which often includes reviews, interpretations, new releases, musician interviews, music history, music creation, and music theory.
