Shows / Decoder Ring
Decoder Ring
Decoder Ring is the show about cracking cultural mysteries. In each episode, host Willa Paskin takes a cultural question, object, or habit; examines its history; and tries to figure out what it means and why it matters.
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Episodes
Decoder RingCalling Dick Tracy! It’s Warren Beatty Again
Oscar-winner Warren Beatty first secured the rights to the comic book character Dick Tracy in the lead up to his 1990 movie adaptation. Decades later, Beatty…
Decoder RingIf You Give a Mouse a Cookie… Will He Want a Welfare Check?
Adults have a long history of trying to find morals and lessons in children’s literature. But what happens when a seemingly innocent book about a boy and a…
Decoder RingChuck E. Cheese Pizza War (Encore)
In the late 1970s, a new and unusual concept for a restaurant chain emerged in California—video games plus bad pizza plus animatronic characters. The result…
Decoder RingThe Hysteria Over Mass Hysteria
“Hysteria” is an ancient word carrying thousands of years of baggage. Though the terminology has changed, hysteria has not gone away, and in its most baffling…
Decoder RingStanding Up for Sitting Down
If you’re lucky, it’s possible you’ve never thought much about sitting. It’s just something your body does, like breathing or sleeping. But in the last decade…
Decoder RingThe Secret Life of Lawn Ornaments
Lawn ornaments are everywhere—but for something so ubiquitous, they’re also mysterious. What’s the person with the flamingo or the gargoyle in their yard…
Decoder RingStuffed Animals Gone Wild
Axolotls. Narwhals. Llamas. Sloths. Every few years, it seems like American kids and parents collectively decide they cannot get enough of a creature that…
Decoder RingSex, Lies, and Hockey Pucks
30 years ago, the Stanley Cup playoffs ignited a rumor that has been messing with Jane Macdougall’s life ever since. In 1994, the Vancouver Canucks had made it…
Decoder RingCaptain Planet to the Rescue
In 1990, the cartoon superhero Captain Planet swooped onto TV screens all over the world. He was the brainchild of media mogul Ted Turner, and in the face of…
Decoder RingWhy Are We Still Using Fat Suits?
A fat suit is a custom-made costume with one goal: to make an actor appear fat without them actually having to be fat. It’s typically a unitard filled with…
Decoder RingHow the Jalapeño Lost Its Heat
The jalapeño is the workhorse of hot peppers. They’re sold fresh, canned, pickled, in hot sauces, salsas, smoked into chipotles, and they outsell all other hot…
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From ‘The Last Archive’: Building an Automatic Songwriting Machine
We’re bringing you an episode of The Last Archive from our friends at Pushkin Industries. In this episode: an exploration of early artificial intelligence, the…
Decoder RingMaking Real Music for a Fake Band
Pop culture is full of fictional bands singing songs purpose-made to capture a moment, a sound. This music doesn’t organically emerge from a scene or genre…
Decoder RingCan the “Bookazine” Save Magazines?
Magazines have fallen on hard times – especially the weekly news, fashion, and celebrity mags that once dominated newsstands. The revenue from magazine racks…
Decoder RingAndrew Wyeth's Secret Nudes (Encore)
In 1986, Andrew Wyeth was the most famous painter in America. He was a household name, on the cover of magazines and tapped to paint presidents. And then he…
Decoder RingWhy Stylists Rule the Red Carpet
Like a manager or an agent or a publicist, a stylist has become a kind of must-have accessory for well-dressed, A-list celebrities. It’s just expected that…
Decoder RingThe Gen X Soda That Was Just "OK"
Thirty years ago, a new kind of soda arrived in select stores. Instead of crowing about how spectacular it was, it offered up a liquid shrug, a fizzy irony. OK…
Decoder RingWhy Do So Many Coffee Shops Look the Same?
The eerie similarity of coffee shops all over the world was so confounding to Kyle Chayka that it led him to write the new book Filterworld: How Algorithms Are…
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2024 Teaser
We’re back with a new batch of cultural mysteries! This year, we’re putting out more new episodes—like many more of them. We’ll be diving down a new rabbit…
Decoder RingThe Forgotten Video Game About Slavery
In 1992, a Minnesota-based software company known for its educational hit The Oregon Trail released another simulation-style game to school districts across…
Decoder RingThe Dating Manual Unlike Any Other
From the moment it was released in 1995, The Rules was controversial. Some people loved it—and swore that the dating manual’s throwback advice helped them land…
Decoder RingMailbag: The Recorder, Limos, and “Baby on Board” Signs
We receive a lot of fantastic show ideas from our listeners—and we’re grateful for each and every one. For our latest mailbag episode, we’re tackling five of…
Decoder RingWhen Art Pranksters Invaded Melrose Place
In the mid-1990s, the prime time drama Melrose Place became a home to hundreds of pieces of contemporary art—and no one noticed. In this episode, Isaac Butler…
Decoder RingThe Fast Decline of the Slow Dance
Judging from teen dramas on Netflix, the slow dance seems to be alive and well. But when you talk to actual teens, it’s clear this time-honored tradition is on…
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Fall 2023 Teaser
We’re back with a new batch of cultural mysteries! This season, Decoder Ring explores the decline of an awkward yet unforgettable rite of passage: slow…
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Think Catchphrases Are Dead? Eat My Shorts.
Once you start listening for catchphrases in everyday life—you can’t stop hearing them. From the radio era’s “Holy mackerel!” to Fonzie’s “Ayyy!” to Urkel’s…
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The Quest for a Homemade Hovercraft
When Slate’s Evan Chung was a kid, he was obsessed with a mysterious advertisement that ran for decades in the scouting magazine Boys’ Life. Under the enticing…
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A Brief History of Making Out
Kissing—the romantic, sexual, steamy kind—is so ingrained in us that it just seems like a fact of life. Like breathing or eating, we just do it. But what if…
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What's Really Going On Inside a Mosh Pit?
The mosh pit has a reputation as a violent place where (mostly) white guys vent their aggression. There’s some truth to that, but it’s also a place bound by…
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The Great Parmesan Cheese Debate
Parmesan is a food—but it’s not just a food. Italy’s beloved cheese is often paired with a deep craving for tradition and identity. But its history also…
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Summer 2023 Teaser
Join Decoder Ring as we unlock a whole new season of cultural mysteries. First, we’ll sniff around Italy’s best-loved cheese to test an incredible claim: Is…
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Who Owns the Tooth Fairy?
We pride ourselves on being grounded, rational beings, but flitting amongst us is a mystery: the Tooth Fairy. This flying piece of folklore is alive and well…
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Why You Can’t Find a Damn Parking Spot
Parking is one of the great paradoxes of American life. On the one hand, we have paved an ungodly amount of land to park our cars. On the other, it seems like…
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The Artist Who Was Both Loved and Disdained
We bring you a special episode from Sidedoor, a podcast about the treasures that fill the vaults of the Smithsonian. This story is inspired by “Big Band,” a…
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The Curious Case of Columbo's Message to Romania Part 2
Last week, we put on the proverbial raincoat and made like Columbo to investigate Peter Falk’s claim that he recorded a special Cold War message telling…
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The Curious Case of Columbo's Message to Romania Part 1
Not too long ago an old clip surfaced of Peter Falk on David Letterman, in which he told an intriguing tale about recording a special Cold War message for…
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Spring 2023 Teaser
Decoder Ring is back with a new season of cultural mysteries to crack. We'll kick things off with a proper Cold War caper....did Peter Falk, star of the old TV…
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Slate Plus Exclusive: The Making of This Season
Host Willa Paskin and producer Katie Shepherd discuss how this season of Decoder Ring came together. Slate Plus members have access to this whole interview…
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The Mailbag Episode
We’re really lucky to get a lot of listener emails, suggesting topics for the show. In this episode, we’re going to dig into a handful of the most fascinating…
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Encore: ‘You’ve Got Mail’ Got It Wrong
(This episode originally aired in March 2020.) The 1998 romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, is about the brutal fight between a…
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Cellino & Barnes, Injury Attorneys, 800-888-8888
Ross Cellino and Steve Barnes were two Buffalo-based lawyers who became the literal poster-men for personal injury advertising. They poured millions of dollars…
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How Preppy Became Streetwear
We bring you a special episode from the Articles of Interest podcast hosted by Avery Trufelman about the incredible reach and adaptability of preppy clothes…
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The New Age Hit Machine
For this episode, a story from Slate senior producer Evan Chung about how Yanni, John Tesh and a number of other surprising acts made it big in the 1990s. It’s…
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The Butt and the Bustle
For about two decades towards the end of the Victorian era, in the 1870s and 1880s, a large bustle-enhanced bottom was the height of fashion. In this episode…
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The Truth About #TheDress
In the history of viral images, #TheDress has got to be in the top 10. This unassuming photo of a party dress kicked off a global debate when people realized…
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Fall 2022 Teaser
Decoder Ring is back with a new season of juicy topics, like.... Remember the viral phenomenon and optical mind-blower known as “The Dress”? What does another…
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McGruff Takes a Bite Out of Crime Pt. 2
McGruff the Crime Dog arrived on the scene at the dawn of the 1980s, just as a firehose of anti-drug PSAs was inundating the youth of America. These messages…
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McGruff Takes a Bite Out of Crime Pt. 1
McGruff the Crime Dog arrived on the scene at the dawn of the 1980s, just as a firehose of anti-drug PSAs was inundating the youth of America. These messages…
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Slate Plus Exclusive: The Making of This Season
Host Willa Paskin talks about topics versus narratives, translating fabulists, and creating a sound landscape for the world of Mae West. Slate Plus members…
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The “Sex” Scandal That Made Mae West
In the early 1930s, Mae West’s dirty talk and hip swiveling walk made her one of the biggest movie stars in America. But before West hit the big-screen, she…
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The First Alien Abductees
When you think of an alien abduction, what do you picture? Humanoid creatures, medical experiments, lost memories retrieved through hypnosis? That narrative…
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The Most Famous Poet No One Remembers
Rod McKuen sold multiple millions of poetry books in the 60s and 70s. He released dozens of albums, was a regular on late night, and was even nominated for an…
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The Mall is Dead (Long Live the Mall)
What do we lose if we lose the mall? 70 years into their existence, these hulking temples to commerce are surprisingly resilient and filled with…
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Summer 2022 Teaser
Decoder Ring is coming back with a new season featuring a whole new set of questions.... Like, is the shopping mall really dying? How did a poet who sold…
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The Storytelling Craze
When did everyone become a storyteller? Decades after George Lucas and Steve Jobs made storytelling a big business, every company now wants to tell “Our…
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“We Got Ourselves a Convoy”
In the 1970s, a song about protesting truckers topped the music charts in multiple countries, and kicked off a pop culture craze for CB radios. In early 2022…
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The Sideways Effect
In 2004, the indie flick Sideways was released in just four theaters, but it had a big impact, earning five Oscar nominations and $110 million worldwide. “I…
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The Madness Behind ‘The Method’
When we think of method acting, we tend to think of actors going a little over the top for a role – like Jared Leto, who allegedly sent his colleagues dead…
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“F--k Everything, We're Doing Five Blades”
In the early 2000s, an arms race broke out in the world of men’s shaving. After decades with razors that had only one blade and then decades with razors that…
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Spring 2022 Teaser
Decoder Ring is coming back with a new season featuring a whole new set of questions…and some good surprising answers. Like, how did razors come to have such a…