Something seems to have happened to car headlights. In the last few years, many people have become convinced that they are much brighter than they used to be—and it’s driving them to the point of rage. Headlight glare is now Americans’ number one complaint on the road. The story of how and why we got here is illuminating and confounding. It’s what happens when an incredible technological breakthrough meets market forces, regulatory failure, and human foibles.

So if you feel like everyone’s driving around with their high beams on all the time, it’s not your imagination. What once seemed like an obscure technical concern has gone mainstream. But can the movement to reduce glare actually do something about the problem?

In this episode, you’ll hear from Nate Rogers, who wrote about the “headlight brightness wars” for The Ringer; Daniel Stern, automotive lighting expert and editor of Driving Vision News; and Paul Gatto, moderator of r/fuckyourheadlights.

This episode of Decoder Ring was written by Willa Paskin and Olivia Briley, and produced by Olivia Briley and Max Freedman. Our team also includes Katie Shepherd and supervising producer Evan Chung. Merritt Jacob is our Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at [email protected], or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281.

Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen.

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Products often tell you exactly how they’re intended to be used. But why leave it at that? As a culture, we have long had a knack for finding ingenious, off-label uses for things. In this episode, we take a close look at a few examples of products that are ostensibly meant for one thing, but are better known for something else entirely. We explore Q-tips, which we are explicitly told not to put into our ears; the Hitachi Magic Wand, the iconic sex toy marketed as a body massager; the musical washboard; and the children’s electrolyte solution Pedialyte that many adults swear by as a hangover cure.

You’ll hear from Hallie Lieberman, author of Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy; Jacqui Barnett of the Columbus Washboard Company; Christopher Wilson, curator and chair of the Division of Home and Community Life at the Smithsonian; musician and educator Súle Greg Wilson; zydeco musicians C.J. Chenier and Steve Nash; Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall, author of Hungover: The Morning After and One Man’s Quest for the Cure; as well as writers Roberto Ferdman, Dan Brooks, and Kaitlyn Tiffany.

Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin, Max Freedman, Katie Shepherd, and Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. We had additional production from Sofie Kodner. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Special thanks to Kate Sloan, Dr. Carol Queen, Bryony Cole, Amber Singer, Molly Born, Laura Selikson, and Nell McShane Wulfhart.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at [email protected], or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281.

Sources for This Episode

Bishop-Stall, Shaughnessy. Hungover: The Morning After and One Man’s Quest for the Cure, Penguin, 2018.

Brooks, Dan. “Letter of Recommendation: Pedialyte,” New York Times Magazine, Jan. 26, 2017.

Comella, Lynn. Vibrator Nation: How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure, Duke University Press, 2017.

Dodson, Betty. “Having Sex with Machines: The Return of the Electric Vibrator,” Dodson and Ross, June 9, 2010.

Feran, Tim. “Pedialyte Is Not Just For Kids,” Columbus Dispatch, July 19, 2015.

Ferdman, Roberto A. “The strange life of Q-tips, the most bizarre thing people buy,” Washington Post, Jan. 20, 2016.

Kushner, David. “Inside Orgasmatron,” Village Voice, March 26, 1999.

Lieberman, Hallie. Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy, Pegasus Books, 2017.

Lieberman, Hallie. “Selling Sex Toys: Marketing and the Meaning of Vibrators in Early Twentieth-Century America,” Enterprise & Society, June 2016.

Russel, Ruth. “Hangover Remedies? I’ll Drink to That!,” Idaho Statesman, Jan. 1, 1978.

Sloan, Kate. Making Magic, 2024.

Tiffany, Kaitlyn. “How Pedialyte got Pedialit,” Vox, Sep. 10, 2018.

Williams, Dell. “The Roots of the Garden,” Journal of Sex Research, August 1990.

Wulfhart, Nell McShane. “The Best Hangover Cure,” Slate, Aug. 29, 2013.

Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen.

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Chicken Soup for the Soul was the brainchild of two motivational speakers who preach the New Thought belief system known as the Law of Attraction. For more than 30 years, the self-help series has compiled reader-submitted stories about kindness, courage, and perseverance into easily digestible books aimed at almost every conceivable demographic: Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, Chicken Soup for the Grandma’s Soul, Chicken Soup for the Golfer’s Soul, and on and on. Since 1993, these books have sold more than 500 million copies worldwide, becoming the best-selling non-fiction book series of all time.

But in recent years, the company has become many other things that seem lightyears away from inspirational publishing: a line of packaged foods, a DVD kiosk retailer, and a meme stock. In this episode, with the help of journalist Amanda Chicago Lewis, we tell the story of how this feel-good brand went from comfort food to junk.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin and Max Freedman and produced by Max. It was edited by Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. Our show is also produced by Katie Shepherd. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Special thanks to Rachel Strom.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at [email protected], or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281.

Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen.

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The infamous annual ritual of spring break—where thousands of college students head to the same warm location and go crazy—can seem like it’s always been here. But it hasn’t. The spring break phenomenon is a holdover from midcentury teen culture that has endured by changing, just enough, to be passed from one generation to the next. In this episode we’re going from the beaches of Fort Lauderdale to Daytona, from the movie screen to the TV set, from MTV to Instagram reels, from its start to its surprisingly recognizable present, as we follow the evolving, self-reinforcing rite that is spring break.

You’ll hear from former MTV staffers Doug Herzog, Salli Frattini, Alan Hunter, and Joe Davola, along with John Laurie, Kaylee Morris, and Slate writer Scaachi Koul.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd and produced by Katie. It was edited by Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. Our show is also produced by Max Freedman. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

Thank you to Bob Friedman and Allan Cohen, producers of Spring Broke; David Cohn, Derreck Johnson, and Ivylise Simones.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at [email protected], or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281.

Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen.

Sources for This Episode

Koul, Scaachi. “From ‘Girls Gone Wild’ to ‘Your Body, My Choice’,” Slate, Dec. 13, 2024.

Laurie, John. “Spring Break: The Economic, Socio-Cultural and Public Governance Impacts of College Students on Spring Break Host Locations,” University of New Orleans Dissertation, Dec. 19, 2008.

Mormino, Gary R. Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams: A Social History of Modern Florida, University Press of Florida, 2008.

Schiltz, James. “Time to Grow Up: The Rise and Fall of Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale,” The Florida Historical Quarterly, Fall 2014.

Spring Broke, dir. Alison Ellwood, Bungalow Media + Entertainment, 2016.

Thompson, Derek. “2,000 Years of Partying: The Brief History and Economics of Spring Break,” The Atlantic, March 26, 2013.

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Look in the nonfiction section of any bookstore and you’ll find dozens of history books making the same bold claim: that their narrow, unexpected subject somehow changed the world. Potatoes, kudzu, soccer, coffee, Iceland, bees, oak trees, sand, chickens—there are books about all of them, and many more besides, with the phrase “changed the world” or something similarly grandiose right there in the title. These books are sometimes called “microhistories” or “thing biographies” and they’ve been a trope in publishing for decades. In this episode, we establish where this trend came from, figure out why it’s been so persistent, and then we put a bunch of authors on the spot, asking them to make the case for why their subjects changed the world.

The writers you’ll hear from include: 

This episode was written by Willa Paskin and produced by Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman also produce our show. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

Thank you to Joshua Specht, author of Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America; Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World; Tina Lupton; Dan Kois; and Nancy Miller.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at [email protected], or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281.

Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen.

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The final installment of our series explores the conversations that most of us dread, like frank discussions of our differences or a negative performance review at work. We often anticipate that these chats will go badly—and end in hurt feelings or embarrassment—but there are proven ways to make them easier to navigate.

Host Charles Duhigg talks with psychologist Jay Van Bavel about strategies for having the hardest conversations. And: Vernā Myers, Netflix’s former vice president for inclusion strategy, tells the story of what happened inside the company after an executive was fired for using a racial slur. 

This Slate miniseries dives into the art and science of meaningful conversations, inspired by Duhigg’s bestselling book, Supercommunicators. The guides we mention in this episode can be found at charlesduhigg.com/tools/

Supercommunicators was produced by Sophie Summergrad and Derek John, who also did the sound design. Our technical director is Merritt Jacob and our supervising producer is Joel Meyer.

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Truck Nutz is a brand name for the dangling plastic testicles some people affix to the bumpers or hitches of their vehicles. Also sold as Bulls Balls, Your Nutz, and other brand names, these plastic novelties have a powerful symbolic charge and are often associated with a crass, macho, red state audience. But truck nuts are a surprisingly complicated signifier whose symbolic power is increasingly divorced from their real-world usage.

On this episode, we talk to owners and users of truck nuts, investigate the origins of the accessories, and deconstruct the meaning of these oft-joked-about symbols. We’ll also take a tour of other novelty testicle products, including Bike Balls (testicular bike lights), Gunsticles (plastic testicles for guns), and Neuticles (prosthetic testicles for neutered pets), to better understand the maligned symbolism of truck nuts.

Links and further reading on some of the things we discussed on the show:

This episode was written by Willa Paskin and edited and produced by Benjamin Frisch. Decoder Ring is produced by Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman. Evan Chung is our supervising producer.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at [email protected]. Or you can also call us now at our new Decoder Ring hotline at 347-460-7281. We love to hear any and all of your ideas for the show.

Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen.

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Why is it that we can tell someone “I’m totally fine!” and they instantly know we’re not? Gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice, and other subtle nonverbal cues play a huge role in how we connect with one another. 

In this episode, host Charles Duhigg explores how we communicate without words, including a deep dive into the visual and tonal cues embedded in one of the biggest sitcoms of all time, The Big Bang Theory. 

He talks with Dr. Dustin York, a professor at Maryville University who studies nonverbal communication and worked in public relations for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. He also sits down with Dave Goetsch, a co-executive producer and longtime writer for The Big Bang Theory, and journalist Jessica Radloff, who wrote an exhaustive book about the show. 

This Slate miniseries dives into the art and science of meaningful conversations, inspired by

Duhigg’s bestselling book, Supercommunicators. 

Supercommunicators was produced by Sophie Summergrad and Derek John, who also did the sound design. Our technical director is Merritt Jacob and our supervising producer is Joel Meyer.

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In 1972, Jerry Lewis—the actor and filmmaker known for slapstick comedies like The Nutty Professor—took the biggest risk of his career when he decided to make a drama called The Day The Clown Cried, about a circus clown who ends up in Auschwitz. This could have been a landmark as one of the first portrayals of the Holocaust in American cinema. Instead, it became a different kind of landmark: allegedly, one of the worst movies ever.

The Day The Clown Cried was never released, and only a handful of people have ever seen it. But the unbelievable concept alone has been enough to make this lost movie a holy grail for curious film buffs. In this episode of Decoder Ring, producer Max Freedman traces how The Day The Clown Cried became such a legendary disaster, why it’s impossible to see, and whether it actually deserves its rotten reputation.

You’ll hear from comedian Patton Oswalt; Shawn Levy, author of King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis; Henry Gonshak, author of Hollywood and the Holocaust; Chuck Denton, whose father Charles co-wrote The Day The Clown Cried; and Jean-Michel Frodon, film critic at slate.fr.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at [email protected]. Or you can also call us now at our new Decoder Ring hotline at 347-460-7281. We’d love to hear any and all of your ideas for the show.

Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen.

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Why are some people able to talk with just about anyone—about almost anything? One answer may lie in the questions we ask—and how deeply we ask them. Stick with us here…

In this episode, host Charles Duhigg examines why deep questions are so powerful and how to ask them in everyday life.

He talks to Nick Epley, psychology professor at the University of Chicago and lifelong researcher of deep questions. And we catch up with Mandy Len Catron, 10 years after she wrote the viral New York Times article “The 36 Questions That Lead to Love.”

This Slate miniseries dives into the art and science of meaningful conversations, inspired by Duhigg’s bestselling book, Supercommunicators. 

Supercommunicators was produced by Derek John and Sophie Summergrad. 

Our technical director is Merritt Jacob. 

Joel Meyer is our supervising producer.

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