Extra: More on the Road to Iraq
Slow Burn
Slate Audio
4.6 • 25.2K Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2021
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, we're highlighting a few excerpts from this season's Slate Plus episodes—interviews with Ann Curry, Slate writers and editors who blogged about the war in 2003, and people who personally knew Ahmad Chalabi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, it's Noreen. |
| 0:02.0 | This week, we're taking a short break from Slow Burn to tell you about Slate Plus and how its members support the work we do here. |
| 0:08.0 | There's a lot that goes behind the scenes of making a narrative podcast like Slow Burn. |
| 0:15.0 | I first started working on the season last spring, and since then, the producers and I have been reading tons of history books, |
| 0:21.8 | digging through various archives, conducting dozens of interviews. And the support we get from |
| 0:26.1 | Slate Plus is what allows us the time and the resources to dive deep into those stories. |
| 0:31.1 | All that knowledge we've accumulated hopefully comes through in the show, but there is actually |
| 0:34.6 | so much more we can't fit into the height eight episode structure, |
| 0:38.1 | and there is so much good tape that we can't include. So that's why we make our Slate Plus bonus |
| 0:43.1 | episodes each season. So we can give listeners a peek into our decision-making and play some audio |
| 0:47.8 | clips and extended interviews that help flesh out more of the story. I think these bonus episodes |
| 0:53.3 | offer a broader view of everything we've worked on this season, and they give a better understanding of the history of the series of the story. I think these bonus episodes offer a broader view of everything we've worked on |
| 0:55.4 | this season, and they give a better understanding of the history we're covering. So today, I'm |
| 1:00.3 | going to give you a preview of what you've been missing out on. In our first bonus episode this |
| 1:06.3 | season, we discussed the more personal side of Ahmed Chalabi. So in the story of the Iraq War, there's a lot of debate about how much influence Chalabi had on the U.S.'s decision to invade. |
| 1:16.4 | And that's important. |
| 1:17.5 | But as I was talking to people who knew Chalabi, I heard lots of personal stories and intimate tidbits about him that I found fascinating. |
| 1:24.7 | So we compiled a few clips for the bonus episode, and here's one anecdote I |
| 1:29.1 | really loved. So my friendship with Ahmed always involved food because I've lived in different |
| 1:37.8 | parts of the world. I lived in Turkey, and later on in New York and Washington, and then back |
| 1:42.8 | in Ankara. Over the years, I would |
| 1:46.2 | from time to time meet with him and it would be over different restaurants. Usually he had a |
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