Review: Slow Burn Steps Inside the House at the Center of Clarence Thomas Controversy

A podcast about a man everyone already has an opinion about.

The iTunes reviews for the latest season of Slow Burn aren't so much reviews of season eight of Slate's blockbuster podcast series as they are reviews of the subject himself, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. "The truth about Thomas couldn't be presented better. Makes me sick even more when I hear his voice," says one. "Despite what the liberal media say, Clarence Thomas is a great man," says another.

In the opening episode, host Joel Anderson drops by Thomas' mother's house and is unexpectedly admitted for a chat. That house ends up at the center of a corruption scandal that hit just as the podcast dropped, making what would otherwise have been more of a canned backstory more timely and salient.

Everyone who might plausibly listen to a podcast like this one already has a strong opinion about Clarence Thomas. This telling of Thomas' journey from "America's blackest child" to campus radical to conservative darling is far from objective, but those reviews suggest listeners aren't either.