Hi, everyone. This is Josh Levine, one of the editors behind Slow Burn. We here at Slate are hard at work on another season of the show.

But in the meantime, I'm here with something I think you'll like. It's my new narrative podcast miniseries, The Queen.

The Queen tells the story of Linda Taylor, a woman who is 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. If you like this episode, I encourage

you to subscribe to the show in its own feed. All four episodes

in this mini-series are out right now so you can go ahead and binge. Just search for

The Queen in your favorite podcast app. Thanks and enjoy the show. Here's episode one of The Queen.

Six years ago, a friend sent me an article from the 1970s about a woman named Linda Taylor.

It said that Taylor had committed welfare fraud to the tune of $154,000 in a single year,

using 80 different aliases.

It also said that she owned a bunch of luxury cars, had filed a fraudulent police report about stolen furs, and had been preparing

to open a medical office, posing as a doctor.

Another article I found said that Linda Taylor, the so-called Welfare Queen, could change

from black to white to Latin with a mere change of a wig.

Before I read those stories, I didn't know that the welfare queen stereotype

had originated with a real person, a black woman with a fur coat and fancy cars, living

a life of luxury thanks to unearned government checks. That vicious caricature had been based on

Linda Taylor, then used to demonize those who could barely afford a winter

coat, let alone a fur. That caricature has persisted decade after decade, as aid to the

poor has gotten slashed by Republican and Democratic administrations. Taylor briefly became infamous

in the 1970s. Newspapers wrote up her outrageous exploits,

...