One Year

By Slate Podcasts

Society & Culture History

What's One Year about?

The people and struggles that changed America—one year at a time. In each episode, host Josh Levin explores a story you may have forgotten, or one you’ve never heard of before. What were the moments that transformed politics, culture, science, religion, and more? And how does the nation’s past shape our present?

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Slate Plus Exclusive: The M...

12.03.2022

In this Slate Plus episode, host Josh Levin and senior producer Evan Chung share behind-the-scenes stories from the making of the fourth season of One Year. Then, Josh is joined by historian Tracy Campbell to talk about his book The ...

One Year episodes:

12.03.2022 Slate Plus Exclusive: The Making of 1942 In this Slate Plus episode, host Josh Levin and senior producer Evan Chung share behind-the-scenes stories from the making of the fourth season of One Year. Then, Josh is joined by historian Tracy Campbell to talk about his book The ...
11.23.2022 1942: The Black-Japanese Axis In 1942, federal officials targeted a group of Black Americans who were allegedly hoping for a Japanese invasion. They uncovered a plot that included stockpiles of weapons and secret passwords—but was any of it true? This week, Joel Anderson tells ...
11.17.2022 1942: When Internment Came to Alaska Six months after Pearl Harbor, Japan launched another attack on the United States. This time, Axis forces actually invaded, turning the Aleutian Islands into a battleground. What the country did next, in the name of “protecting” Alaska’s indigenous people, is ...
11.10.2022 1942: The Info Wars of World War II In March 1942, a new nightly radio show hit the American airwaves. The stated goal of Station Debunk was to correct all the lies getting tossed around about America’s involvement in the war. But the real story was a whole ...
11.03.2022 1942: The Day the Music Stopped On Aug. 1, 1942, the nation’s recording studios went silent. Musicians were fed up with the new technologies threatening their livelihoods, so they refused to record until they got their fair share. This week, Evan Chung explores one of the ...
10.27.2022 1942: The Year Everyone Got Married There were 1.8 million weddings in 1942, the most that had ever been recorded in a single year in American history. But how many of them would last? 98-year-old Millie Summergrad tells the story of one that did: her own. ...
10.20.2022 1942: The Most Hated Man in America At the beginning of World War II, the greatest threat to the American war effort wasn’t the Nazis or the Japanese—it was runaway inflation. The man in charge of stopping it was the country’s “price czar,” Leon Henderson. In 1942, ...
10.14.2022 One Year: 1942 Trailer Coming Thursday, October 20th, the fourth season of One Year covers 1942, the most tumultuous year in modern American history. We’re going to bring you stories from the distant past that sound like they’ve been pulled from the present day. ...
10.06.2022 Slate Plus Exclusive: The Making of 1986 In this Slate Plus episode, host Josh Levin and senior producer Evan Chung share behind-the-scenes stories from the making of the third season of One Year. Slate Plus members have access to this whole interview. Sign up for Slate Plus ...
09.29.2022 1986: The Man From Fifth Avenue After Joe Mauri gets evicted from his New York apartment, he becomes a star in the USSR, the subject of a documentary about the injustices of capitalism. But this Cold War icon was using the Soviets just as much as ...
09.22.2022 1986: The Miracle of Cokeville On May 16, 1986, a man with a bomb held an entire elementary school hostage in the tiny town of Cokeville, Wyoming. Instead of becoming victims of unimaginable tragedy, all of the hostages in this predominantly Mormon community survived. But ...
09.15.2022 1986: Herschel vs. the Blubber Busters In Seattle, a pack of voracious sea lions decimates the local fish population. When fireworks and an underwater air horn don’t scare away the whisker-y mammals, bureaucrats and scientists are faced with a thorny question: Who decides which creatures get ...
09.08.2022 1986: A Boycott in Mississippi Black residents of Indianola, Mississippi, were fed up with decades of separate-and-unequal classrooms. When a white outsider got hired as school superintendent, they decided to take a stand. This week, Joel Anderson tells the story of how their boycott of ...
09.01.2022 1986: The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults Rumors about the legendary gangster Al Capone’s buried treasure transform an abandoned Chicago hotel into the center of the entertainment universe. Will Geraldo Rivera’s excavation on live TV turn up money, skeletons, or nothing at all? One Year is produced ...
08.25.2022 1986: The Ultimate Field Trip This week, 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 ...
08.18.2022 1986: No Crime Day Basketball star Isiah Thomas had an audacious plan to transform Detroit: asking criminals to stay on the good side of the law for 24 hours. Would “No Crime Day” set the city on a new path, or was it a ...
08.11.2022 One Year: 1986 Trailer Coming Thursday, August 18th: The new season of One Year covers 1986, a year of swaggering excess on Wall Street and in cineplexes, but also hardship and deprivation in cities all over the U.S. You’ll hear new perspectives on the ...
04.16.2022 1977 Rewind: Anita Bryant's War on Gay Rights This is a reprise of the first episode of our season on 1977. Miami, 1977: Pop singer and orange juice spokeswoman Anita Bryant takes a stand against a local ordinance—and becomes the leader of a national anti-gay movement. Her campaign ...
01.13.2022 1995: Carolyn's Diary The first true online diarist got famous for blurring the lines between private and public life. She also paid a price for her radical transparency. This episode of One Year was produced by Evan Chung, Madeline Ducharme, and Josh Levin. ...
01.06.2022 1995: Hey Macarena! In the mid-1990s, a bilingual pop song brought a huge amount of joy to a huge number of people. And then, very quickly, the Macarena became a cultural pariah. This episode of One Year was produced by Evan Chung, Madeline ...
12.16.2021 1995: Ann Arbor's DNA Dragnet When a serial rapist struck Ann Arbor, Michigan, the police turned to drastic measures, based on the promise and power of DNA. For law enforcement, genetic testing seemed like a can’t-miss idea. But DNA didn’t fix anything in Ann Arbor. ...
12.09.2021 1995: Hitting the Spot In 1995, aspiring filmmakers created the first ever soap opera on the Web. Hollywood saw it as the future of entertainment. But a fan-led revolt showed that interactivity sometimes has a price. This week, Evan Chung explains the rise and ...
12.02.2021 1995: Dr. GIFT In 1995, an enormous scandal rocked the burgeoning field of reproductive medicine. This week, Christina Cauterucci tells the story of how one of the biggest ethical breaches in American medical history became one woman’s personal nightmare. One Year is produced ...
11.23.2021 1995: Fake Oxford In 1995, a group of American teenagers crossed the Atlantic Ocean to attend one of the world's most prestigious universities. When they got to England, they found something totally unexpected. One Year is produced by Josh Levin, Evan Chung, and ...
11.18.2021 1995: The Man Who Didn't Bomb Oklahoma City White supremacist, anti-government terrorists attacked Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. A Muslim American came under immediate suspicion. How did a man who had nothing to do with the bombing get connected to one of the most horrific crimes in ...
11.16.2021 One Year: 1995 Trailer Coming this Thursday, Nov 18th: The new season of One Year covers 1995, a year when homegrown terrorists attacked Oklahoma City, America went online, and the Macarena took over nightclubs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
08.26.2021 1977: More on the Music, Movies, TV, and Culture of 1977 If you enjoyed exploring 1977 in One Year, you'll want to listen to this season's Slate Plus episodes, where Slatesters like June Thomas, Chris Molanphy, Willa Paskin, Matthew Dessem, Sam Adams, and Karen Han dive deeper into the music, movies, ...
08.19.2021 1977: Jesus on a Tortilla After Maria Rubio saw Jesus on a tortilla, her family got besieged by believers and gawkers and the national press. But for the Rubios, the tortilla wasn’t just a public spectacle. It was the miracle that changed their family. And ...
08.12.2021 1977: Roots: The Saga of Alex Haley Alex Haley’s Roots displayed the brutal realities of slavery to more than 100 million Americans. The book and mini-series also made a bold claim: that Haley was the first Black American to trace his lineage all the way back to ...
08.05.2021 1977: Elvis, the Pledge, and Extraterrestrials Three stories from one day in August 1977. Elvis Presley dies, and the National Enquirer goes after the ultimate tabloid scoop: a photo of the King in his coffin. A New Jersey high schooler becomes a pariah when she refuses ...
07.29.2021 1977: The Miracle Cure Medical authorities said that Laetrile was dangerous quackery. It became a sensation anyway. Diana Green saw this drug made from apricot pits as her son Chad’s best chance to survive leukemia. Her shocking actions, and the little boy affected by ...
07.22.2021 1977: Mary Shane's Rookie Season Mary Shane made history with the Chicago White Sox, becoming the first woman hired as a legitimate major-league baseball announcer. But in 1977, she had to fight to be taken seriously in one of America’s most sexist industries. One Year ...
07.15.2021 1977: Mr. Marijuana and the Drug Czar America’s top weed evangelist and the nation’s drug czar shared the same goal: to loosen up the country’s marijuana laws. In 1977, everything was trending their way—until a blowout Christmas party destroyed their plans, and transformed the future of marijuana ...
07.08.2021 1977: Anita Bryant's War on Gay Rights Miami, 1977: Pop singer and orange juice spokeswoman Anita Bryant takes a stand against a local ordinance—and becomes the leader of a national anti-gay movement. Her campaign against gay rights, and the gay community's fight against her, would change America. ...
06.28.2021 Introducing: One Year The first season of One Year will focus on 1977, a year when gay rights hung in the balance, Roots dominated the airwaves, and Jesus appeared on a tortilla. Follow the show now to get our first episode on July ...
06.16.2020 Slow Burn S4 Ep. 1: White Knight If you liked The Queen, subscribe to Slow Burn Season 4: David Duke. Here's Episode 1. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a white supremacist became an American political phenomenon. David Duke’s rise to power and prominence—his election to ...
06.17.2019 Bonus \| An Audiobook Preview Listen to the first chapter of the audiobook version of The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth. Narrated by January LaVoy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
06.10.2019 Bonus \| How to Write This Book In this excerpt from the second bonus episode of The Queen, Dan Kois talks to Josh Levin about the process of writing the reporting-intensive book the podcast series is based on. They’re joined by a panel of three distinguished authors, ...
06.05.2019 Bonus \| The Kidnapping of Baby Fronczak Is it possible that Linda Taylor perpetrated one of the most infamous child abductions in American history? In this excerpt from the first bonus episode of The Queen, Josh Levin talks to Paul Joseph Fronczak about how Taylor could be ...
06.03.2019 Bobbie and Diana Linda Taylor had a tendency to emerge from out of nowhere, upend everything in her path, then vanish without leaving a forwarding address. The final episode of The Queen focuses on two different stories about the lives Taylor changed. In ...
05.27.2019 Constance A decade before she became known as the “welfare queen,” Linda Taylor put herself at the center of a different Chicago scandal. Upon the death of gambling kingpin Lawrence Wakefield, Taylor posed as the heir to his sizable fortune. The ...
05.20.2019 An Incredible Con In the 1970s, a pair of very different men fought to define Linda Taylor’s image. For presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, Taylor epitomized the brokenness of the federal bureaucracy and the broader trend of poor people getting rich off the public ...
05.13.2019 Coronation Linda Taylor became the “welfare queen” in 1974 when the Chicago Tribune publicized her outrageous exploits. The reporter who introduced her to the world was a Pulitzer Prize winner named George Bliss. He stumbled into the Taylor story while investigating ...
05.06.2019 Introducing The Queen Linda Taylor was a con artist, a kidnapper, maybe even a murderer. She was also America’s original “welfare queen,” the villain Ronald Reagan needed to create a vision of a country being taken advantage of by its poorest citizens. Josh ...

One Year

What's One Year about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

One Year episodes:

Slate Plus Exclusive: The Making of 1942

1942: The Black-Japanese Axis

1942: When Internment Came to Alaska

1942: The Info Wars of World War II

1942: The Day the Music Stopped

1942: The Year Everyone Got Married

1942: The Most Hated Man in America

One Year: 1942 Trailer

Slate Plus Exclusive: The Making of 1986

1986: The Man From Fifth Avenue

1986: The Miracle of Cokeville

1986: Herschel vs. the Blubber Busters

1986: A Boycott in Mississippi

1986: The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults

1986: The Ultimate Field Trip

1986: No Crime Day

One Year: 1986 Trailer

1977 Rewind: Anita Bryant's War on Gay Rights

1995: Carolyn's Diary

1995: Hey Macarena!

1995: Ann Arbor's DNA Dragnet

1995: Hitting the Spot

1995: Dr. GIFT

1995: Fake Oxford

1995: The Man Who Didn't Bomb Oklahoma City

One Year: 1995 Trailer

1977: More on the Music, Movies, TV, and Culture of 1977

1977: Jesus on a Tortilla

1977: Roots: The Saga of Alex Haley

1977: Elvis, the Pledge, and Extraterrestrials

1977: The Miracle Cure

1977: Mary Shane's Rookie Season

1977: Mr. Marijuana and the Drug Czar

1977: Anita Bryant's War on Gay Rights

Introducing: One Year

Slow Burn S4 Ep. 1: White Knight

Bonus | An Audiobook Preview

Bonus | How to Write This Book

Bonus | The Kidnapping of Baby Fronczak

Bobbie and Diana

Constance

An Incredible Con

Coronation

Introducing The Queen