Decoder Ring

By Slate Podcasts

Society & Culture History

What's Decoder Ring about?

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.

4.6

1,165 ratings

Download our free app to listen on your phone

LAST EPISODE

The Storytelling Craze

05.17.2022

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 Story.” Instagram and TikTok let everyone else tell their “stories,” and the number of people ...

Decoder Ring episodes:

05.17.2022 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 Story.” Instagram and TikTok let everyone else tell their “stories,” and the number of people ...
05.10.2022 “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, that same song became an anthem for a new trucker-led protest movement ...
05.03.2022 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 thought it was just going to be a nice little comedy,” filmmaker Alexander ...
04.26.2022 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 rats when he was preparing to be The Joker, ...
04.19.2022 “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 had only two, the number of blades rapidly spiraled up ...
04.12.2022 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 ridiculous amount of blades on them? Did one line from Paul ...
02.10.2022 Decoder Ring Presents Endless Thread: The Rickroll Hi Decoder Ring listeners! Right now we’re in-between seasons and starting to work on some new stories, but in the meantime we wanted to share something from another podcast we think you’d love: Endless Thread from WBUR, where hosts Ben ...
12.23.2021 Custer's Revenge Custer's Revenge is widely considered one of the worst video games ever made. Originally released as part of a series of Swedish Erotica-branded adult games for the Atari 2600, Custer's Revenge involves moving a pixelated General Custer across the screen ...
12.14.2021 The Fame That Got Away Today on Decoder Ring: Three stories about fame, and one about monkeys. Are primates susceptible to celebrity endorsements? What does fame do to the mind of a famous person? Who were the famous tattooed ladies of the 1880s? And what's ...
12.07.2021 Truly Tasteless Jokes Note: This episode is about offensive material, and so contains explicit and offensive language. Truly Tasteless Jokes were a series of joke books that dominated the bestsellers list during the 1980s. An equal opportunity joke book: Truly Tasteless Jokes were ...
11.30.2021 The Philosophy of Vampires In literature, the choice to become a vampire is a metaphor for transformative experiences. On this episode, we bring you a story from Slate's Hi-Phi Nation podcast, which explores problems in contemporary philosophy through story. From real-life blood suckers, to ...
11.23.2021 You Just Lost The Game When you think about the game, you lose the game. When you lose the game you must declare that you have lost the game, causing all others in your vicinity to also lose the game. That’s it, that’s the game. ...
11.16.2021 The Alberta Rat War Rats live wherever people live, with one exception: the Canadian province of Alberta. A rat sighting in Alberta is a major local event that mobilizes the local government to identify and eliminate any hint of infestation. Rat sightings makes the ...
11.09.2021 The Great Helga Hype In the summer of 1986, both Time Magazine and Newsweek ran blockbuster cover stories on the same subject: a secret cache of provocative, intimate paintings by Andrew Wyeth, one of America's most famous artists. These paintings were completed over fifteen ...
08.06.2021 Selling Out In 2001, Oprah Winfrey invited Jonathan Franzen to come on her show to discuss his new novel The Corrections. A month later she withdrew the invitation, kicking off a media firestorm. The Oprah-Franzen Book Club Dust-Up of 2001 was a ...
07.27.2021 Tattoo Flash Time does funny thing to everything, but especially to tattoos. Today, four stories about tattoos whose meanings have shifted with the passage of years, decades, or centuries: first, a look into an archive of 300 preserved tattooed skins, then a ...
07.20.2021 The Tootsie Shot You know the Tootsie Shot. It’s that shot from the movies: a really busy midtown street, protagonist smack in the middle of it all, everyone going somewhere. It’s one of the most recognizable shots in film. It can be found ...
07.13.2021 Who Killed The Segway? In the year 2000, Dan Kois was a junior book agent working on selling a secretive book proposal called IT, a codename for what would eventually be revealed as the Segway personal scooter. This is the story of the invention ...
07.06.2021 The Sign Painter Ilona Granet was a New York art-scene fixture who won the praise of the art world when she put up anti-harassment street signs in lower Manhattan in the mid- 1980s. Her career seemed like a sure thing, but three decades ...
06.29.2021 That Seattle Muzak Sound If you love the show and want to support us, consider joining Slate Plus. With Slate Plus you can binge the whole season of Decoder Ring right now, plus ad free podcasts, bonus episodes, and much more. On this episode, ...
06.22.2021 The Invention of Hydration To say that hydration is an invention is only a slight exaggeration. Back in the 1970’s and ‘80s, no one carried bottled water with them, but by the ‘90s it was a genuine status object. How did bottled water transform ...
06.15.2021 The Soap Opera Machine Welcome to a brand new season of Decoder Ring! On this episode, we investigate the wild world of soap operas through the lens of one legendary, decades-long, ripped-from-the-headlines storyline. The rape of Marty Seabrook dared to combine the melodrama of ...
03.15.2021 Decoder Ring Presents The Sporkful’s Mission: ImPASTAble Right now Decoder Ring is working on a full season of new episodes coming this June, but in the meantime we wanted to share this episode from our friends over at The Sporkful. Each week on The Sporkful Dan Pashman ...
12.21.2020 The Blue Steak Experiment What took blue food so long to catch on? Today it’s all over the freezer aisle, in candies for kids, in tortilla chips, and novelty foods, but it wasn’t very long ago that food experts agreed: blue food was an ...
11.23.2020 The Cabbage Patch Kids Riots In 1983, the Cabbage Patch Kids were released, causing widespread pandemonium in toy stores and in the media. How did a children'a toy inspire such bad adult behavior? On this episode of Decoder Ring we explore the strange world of ...
10.26.2020 Jane Fonda's Workout, Part 2: Hanoi Jane's VHS Revolution How did Hanoi Jane become Exercise Jane? This is the second part of our two-parter on Jane Fonda's Workout. If you haven't yet, listen to the previous episode "Jane and Leni" first, it will give you the full context for ...
10.12.2020 Jane Fonda's Workout, Part 1: Jane and Leni When Jane Fonda granted us an interview to talk about her famous workout tape, things didn't go as planned. On part one of a special two-part Decoder Ring, we explore the decades-long friendship of Jane Fonda and Leni Cazden, the ...
08.14.2020 Mystery of the Mullet The mullet, the love-to-hate-it hairstyle is as associated with the 1980's as Ronald Reagan, junk bonds, and break dancing. But in at least one major way, we are suffering from a collective case of false memory syndrome. In this episode ...
07.13.2020 The Karen The Karen, a white woman who surveys, inconveniences, and terrorizes, service workers and people of color is a relatively new term in the culture, but her character type has been with us for centuries. In this episode of Decoder Ring ...
06.10.2020 The Metrosexual In 2003, the word "metrosexual", meaning a well-groomed heterosexual man, exploded all over the English lexicon. It invaded the news, TV, and even American politics. On this episode of Decoder Ring we explore the origins of the metrosexual, and how ...
05.11.2020 Gotta Get Down on Friday Rebecca Black's music video for Friday was Youtube's most watched video of 2011, thrusting the thirteen-year-old Rebecca into a very harsh spotlight. Dubbed "The Worst Music Video Ever Made" Friday was an almost universal object of derision. This is the ...
04.08.2020 Unicorn Poop How did poop get cute? On this episode of Decoder Ring we trace the rise of cute poop from the original Japanese poop emoji to more modern poop toys which rely on the Youtube algorithm to get seen and sold. ...
03.19.2020 Rubber Duckie Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. How did the humble rubber duck become an icon of bath time? On this ...
03.02.2020 The Shop Around the Corner Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. The 1998 romantic comedy You've Got Mail starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan is ...
02.10.2020 Friend of Dorothy Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. When Peter Mac was young, he found solace from his troubles in the voice ...
02.03.2020 The Stowe-Byron Controversy Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. When Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote an exposé of Lord Byron's incestuous affair in 1869, ...
12.09.2019 Murphy's Law Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. Nick Spark fell down a rabbit hole tracking down the origins of Murphy’s Law, ...
11.06.2019 Gender Reveal Party Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. Jenna Karvunidis invented the gender reveal party, but now she has regrets. On this ...
10.07.2019 Bart Simpson Mania Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. In the early 1990's Bart Simpson became a breakout star while also becoming a ...
08.12.2019 Ice Cream Truck Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. Why is the ice cream truck business so bananas? On this episode of Decoder ...
07.15.2019 Pillow Talk Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. Over the last half century the decorative pillow has been crowding out our sitting ...
06.11.2019 Chuck E. Cheese Pizza War Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. The King was an animatronic lounge singer who performed in Chuck E. Cheese locations ...
04.29.2019 Videomate: Men Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. Videomate: Men is a VHS tape released in 1987 featuring 60 single men pitching ...
03.25.2019 Truck Nutz Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. Truck Nutz are a brand name for the dangling plastic testicles some people affix ...
02.25.2019 Baby Shark Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. Baby Shark is an megaviral YouTube video, an unstoppable earworm, a top 40 hit, ...
01.31.2019 The Grifter Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. Brett Johnson was a career criminal: a fraudster, a con man, a cyber criminal, ...
12.03.2018 Sad Jennifer Aniston Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. Jennifer Aniston’s story had it all: Heartbreak, secrecy, sex, betrayal. But what it also ...
10.29.2018 The Incunabula Papers Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. Ong's Hat, or The Incunabula Papers, is a conspiracy theory that arose on the ...
10.01.2018 Hotel Art Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. Hotel Art used to be one of the ultimate symbols of bad taste, it ...
08.27.2018 The Paper Doll Club Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. Paper dolls were a ubiquitous part of children’s lives for decades, and then mostly ...

Older episodes

Decoder Ring

What's Decoder Ring about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Decoder Ring episodes:

The Storytelling Craze

“We Got Ourselves a Convoy”

The Sideways Effect

The Madness Behind ‘The Method’

“F--k Everything, We're Doing Five Blades”

Spring 2022 Teaser

Decoder Ring Presents Endless Thread: The Rickroll

Custer's Revenge

The Fame That Got Away

Truly Tasteless Jokes

The Philosophy of Vampires

You Just Lost The Game

The Alberta Rat War

The Great Helga Hype

Selling Out

Tattoo Flash

The Tootsie Shot

Who Killed The Segway?

The Sign Painter

That Seattle Muzak Sound

The Invention of Hydration

The Soap Opera Machine

Decoder Ring Presents The Sporkful’s Mission: ImPASTAble

The Blue Steak Experiment

The Cabbage Patch Kids Riots

Jane Fonda's Workout, Part 2: Hanoi Jane's VHS Revolution

Jane Fonda's Workout, Part 1: Jane and Leni

Mystery of the Mullet

The Karen

The Metrosexual

Gotta Get Down on Friday

Unicorn Poop

Rubber Duckie

The Shop Around the Corner

Friend of Dorothy

The Stowe-Byron Controversy

Murphy's Law

Gender Reveal Party

Bart Simpson Mania

Ice Cream Truck

Pillow Talk

Chuck E. Cheese Pizza War

Videomate: Men

Truck Nutz

Baby Shark

The Grifter

Sad Jennifer Aniston

The Incunabula Papers

Hotel Art

The Paper Doll Club

Other shows like Decoder Ring: