We’ve got something special for you this Labor Day: an episode from the new season of Slate’s narrative history podcast One Year. Evan Chung tells the story of the American teachers who competed for an unprecedented prize: a spot on the January 1986 launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Three of the finalists describe the grueling selection process and the tragedy that killed one of their own.
One Year is produced by Evan Chung, Sophie Summergrad, Sam Kim, Madeline Ducharme, and Josh Levin.
Derek John is Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts and Merritt Jacob is Sr. Technical Director.
Slate Plus members get to hear more about the making of One Year. Get access to extra episodes, listen to the show without any ads, and support One Year by signing up for Slate Plus for just $15 for your first three months.
The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities(U California Press, 2022) tells the story of how cities across the United States went from having little wildlife to filling, dramatically and unexpectedly, with wild creatures. Today, many of these cities have more large and charismatic wild animals living in them than at any time in at least the past 150 years. Why have so many cities—the most artificial and human-dominated of all Earth’s ecosystems—grown rich with wildlife, even as wildlife has declined in most of the rest of the world? And what does this paradox mean for people, wildlife, and nature on our increasingly urban planet?
The Accidental Ecosystem is the first book to explain this phenomenon from a deep historical perspective, and its focus includes a broad range of species and cities. Cities covered include New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Austin, Miami, Chicago, Seattle, San Diego, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Digging into the natural history of cities and unpacking our conception of what it means to be wild, this book provides fascinating context for why animals are thriving more in cities than outside of them. Author Peter S. Alagona argues that the proliferation of animals in cities is largely the unintended result of human decisions that were made for reasons having little to do with the wild creatures themselves. Considering what it means to live in diverse, multispecies communities and exploring how human and non-human members of communities might thrive together, Alagona goes beyond the tension between those who embrace the surge in urban wildlife and those who think of animals as invasive or as public safety hazards. The Accidental Ecosystem calls on readers to reimagine interspecies coexistence in shared habitats, as well as policies that are based on just, humane, and sustainable approaches.
Peter S. Alagona is a Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Brady McCartney is an interdisciplinary environmental social scientist at the University of Florida. Email: Brady.McCartney@UFL.edu
With guests Jamelle Bouie and Carolyn Shapiro, Kate and Leah analyze the fan fiction that is the Independent State Legislature "Theory" (emphasis on the quotation marks), which threatens to take the main stage in an upcoming case about the power of state legislatures to set rules for federal elections.
Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025!
The terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, took a large toll on America’s sense of security. In the dawn of this new era, Congress moved to take swift action by creating the Patriot Act. The stated goal was to identify and strike back against terrorists, but in practice, the law had much wider-reaching effects. But everything changed in 2013 when an intelligence contractor named Edward Snowden decided to expose the truth, leaking more classified documents than any whistleblower in American history.
This four-part series from American Scandal follows Edward Snowden’s transformation, from a respected intelligence officer, to the most wanted whistleblower in the world.
This is just a preview of Edward Snowden from American Scandal, but you can listen to the rest of this episode at wondery.fm/AS_OpeningArguments
Since 1978, departing U.S. Presidents have to leave the office — and almost everything in it — behind. Why is that? And what are the implications for former President Trump's legal problems? Patrick Eddington explains.
When it comes to raising children, says Helena Andrews-Dyer, there are complicated dynamics connected to race and class – which she writes about in her book The Mamas. In an interview with Rachel Martin, Dyer details the trials and tribulations of being a first-time parent, attending social events with other moms and all the pressure put on her internally and externally to make sure her child turns out alright. But it's her experience as a Black mom among a sea of white mothers that pushed her to reimagine her parenting "through a larger lens of race, and class, and gentrification."
