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Working: A TV Critic Pivots to Exposing Hollywood Abuses

Slate Daily Feed

Slate

News, Society & Culture, Business

3.91.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2023

⏱️ 47 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, host June Thomas talks to journalist Maureen Ryan, author of the book Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood. In recent years, Ryan has pivoted from TV criticism to writing stories focused on abuses of power in the TV industry. Her new book touches on troubling situations on shows like Lost, Saturday Night Live, The Goldbergs, Sleepy Hollow, and more. In the interview, Ryan discusses her reporting process and what it's felt like to watch the creators of some of her favorite shows come under fire. After the interview, Thomas and co-host Nate Chinen discuss why there might be some reason for hope in Hollywood after all.  In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, Ryan talks about how her pivot to this kind of reporting has affected her career. Send your questions about creativity and any other feedback to working@slate.com or give us a call at (304) 933-9675. Podcast production by Zak Rosen. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you’ll also be supporting the work we do here on Working. Sign up now at slate.com/workingplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:42.2

Hey everybody, it's Tim Heidecker. You know me, Tim and Eric Bridesmaid's in the fantastic

0:46.5

four. I'd like to personally invite you to listen to office hours live with me and my co-hosts

0:51.9

DJ Doug Pound. Hello. And Vic Berger. Howdy. Every week we bring you last fun games and lots of

0:57.6

other surprises. It's live. We take your Zoom calls. We love having fun. Excuse me?

1:01.9

That song. Vic said something. It's a song. Music.

1:04.4

I like having fun. I like to laugh. I like to meet people who can make me laugh. Please subscribe.

1:13.4

No.

1:23.6

If you think that me too and other reckoning fixed the entertainment industries, you are very

1:29.6

mistaken. And there are reasons to have hope, but the industry very often mistakes identifying a

1:36.6

problem for solving it. And it hand waves and does a performance around. We feel bad about this

1:43.3

and then it just carries on as usual once everyone forgets. Welcome back to working. I'm your host,

1:50.4

Nate Shenan. And I'm your other host, June Thomas. June, whose voice did we hear at the top of the

1:57.6

episode? So that was Maureen Ryan, known to one and all as Mo. She's a veteran TV critic and

...

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