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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Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen.
Episodes (133)
Jane Fonda’s Workout, Part 2: Hanoi Jane’s VHS Revolution (Encore)
In part two of our special two-part episode, we return to the 1982 VHS tape that created the at-home video industry: Jane Fonda’s Workout. On this episode, originally released in 2020, we deconstruct...
Jane Fonda’s Workout, Part 1: Jane and Leni (Encore)
In 1982, the Jane Fonda Workout became the best-selling home video of all time. Over decades, it and its 22 follow ups would spawn a fitness empire, sell more than 17 million copies, and transform...
How to Hunt a Mammoth, and Other Experiments in Archaeology
Experimental archeology is, simply put, archeology that involves running experiments. Where traditional archaeologists may study, research, analyze, and theorize about how artifacts were made or used,...
The Bad-Mouthing of British Teeth
From The Simpsons’ Big Book of British Smiles to Austin Powers’ ochre-tinged grin, American culture can’t stop bad-mouthing English teeth. But why? Are they worse than any other nation’s? June Thomas...
Mailbag: Drug Names, Cow Abductions, and the “Ass-Intensifier”
In this episode we’re opening our mailbag to answer three fascinating questions from our listeners. How did “ass,” a word for donkeys and butts, become what linguists call an “intensifier” for just...
Introducing The Sporkful | Is Your Recipe Lying To You?
If you look at any list of best-selling cookbooks, certain words come up over and over again: quick, easy, fast, effortless. But is it actually possible to deliver deliciousness in no time? Or are...
The White Noise Boom
White noise has a very precise technical definition, but people use the term loosely, to describe all sorts of washes of sound—synthetic hums, or natural sounds like a rainstorm or crashing waves—that...
The Boston Cinematic Universe
This episode is a first for Decoder Ring: a live show, recorded at the WBUR Festival in Boston, Massachusetts. Given the setting, we decided to take on a Boston-based cultural mystery: namely, the...
The Laff Box (Encore)
Decoder Ring is marking its 100th episode this year. To celebrate, we’re revisiting our very first episode from 2018, which asks: What happened to the laugh track? For nearly five decades, the laugh...
The Glaring Problem with Headlights
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...
Off-the-Wall Stories of Off-Label Use
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...
How “Chicken Soup” Sold Its Soul
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...
Spring Break Forever
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...
How Books About Things That Changed the World… Changed the World
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,...
Truck Nutz (Encore)
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...
Jerry Lewis’ Lost Holocaust Clown Movie
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,...
The Scratch-Off Ticket’s Instant Win
You may never have thought very hard about scratch-off tickets, but that’s part of their power. They’re a form of gambling that’s simply a pedestrian part of American life. But not so long ago, they...
Jump, Jive and Fail: The ’90s Swing Craze
When we got multiple listener emails asking about the swing revival of the late 1990s, host Willa Paskin’s first, knee jerk reaction was just: no. She lived through it, and remembers it as being so...
I am Tupperware, I Contain Multitudes
The storage container is a stealthy star of the modern home. It’s something we use to organize more of our stuff than ever before, and also something other people use to organize their stuff for our...
Introducing Planet Money: Can Money Buy Happiness?
People often say that money can't buy you happiness. Sometimes, if you ask them to tell you more about it, they'll mention a famous 2010 study by Nobel Prize winners Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton....
Mailbag: Fruit Snacks, Waterbeds, and Lobster Tanks
It’s our annual mailbag episode! We get a lot of wonderful reader emails suggesting topics for the show — and at the end of the year we try to answer some of them. This year, we’re tackling four...
Mystery of the Mullet (Encore)
The mullet, the love-to-hate-it hairstyle, is as associated with the 1980’s as Ronald Reagan, junk bonds, and breakdancing. But in at least one major way, we are suffering from a collective case of...
Reconsidering One of the “Worst” TV Shows of All Time
In 1980, a variety show debuted on NBC called Pink Lady and Jeff. Its stars were a pair of Japanese pop idols known for catchy, choreographed dance numbers. Pink Lady was inescapable in Japan: selling...
A Feel-Good Story About the End of the World
The fear that the Earth could be destroyed by a killer asteroid is an anxiety that pops up all the time in fiction and is grounded in fact. But funnily enough—actually being pancaked by a giant space...
The Wrongest Bird in Movie History
There is a prominent bird in the 2000 film Charlie’s Angels that makes absolutely no sense. This so-called Pygmy Nuthatch doesn’t look or sound like it should, or live where the characters say it...
Selling Out (Encore)
Whatever happened to selling out? The defining concern of Generation X has become a relic from another era. How that happened is best illustrated by one of the idea’s last gasps, when in 2001, Oprah...
Calling 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 kept playing Tracy in bizarre late-night...
If 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 hungry mouse becomes fodder for the culture...
Chuck 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 was Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre,...
The 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 instances it can even be contagious. The...
Standing 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 or so, sitting has stepped into the...
The 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 trying to say—and why do they want to say it...
Stuffed 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 makes teddy bears seem impossibly quaint. In...
Sex, 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 all the way to Game 7 of the Stanley...
In 1994, the Vancouver Canucks had made it all the way to Game 7 of the Stanley...
Captain 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 impending ecological catastrophe, he had...
Why 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 mattress foam and other wiggly, jiggly...
How 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 peppers in the United States. These...
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 story of the composer Raymond Scott’s...
Making 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, hoping to find an audience. Instead it...
Can 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 has plummeted in recent years, and many...
Andrew 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 revealed a secret cache of 240 pieces of...
Why 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 they will have hired someone to select the...
The 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 Soda was an inside joke for people who...
Why 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 Flattening Culture. In today’s episode,...
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 hole every two weeks all year long. Starting...
The 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 the country. Freedom! took kids on a...
The 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 a husband. Others thought it was...
Mailbag: 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 your questions, including “Why the hell do...
When 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 tells the story of the artist collective...
The 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 life support. In this episode, we trace...
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 dancing. And, how did millions of TV viewers...
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 multiple go-to lines on Family Matters, we...
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 headline “You Can Float on Air,” the ad...
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 it’s not like that at all?
In this...
In this...
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 camaraderie and—believe it or...
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 involves intrepid immigrants, lucrative...
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 the most authentic parmesan being made not...
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 in the 21st century, handed down to kids...
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 it’s never enough.
Slate’s Henry Grabar...
Slate’s Henry Grabar...
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 defining work by the painter LeRoy...
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 Romanians to “put down their guns.” This week,...
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 Romanian state television. The clip went...
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 show Columbo, really team up with the...
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. Sign up for Slate Plus to access this...
Slate Plus members have access to this whole interview. Sign up for Slate Plus to access this...
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 ones that we’ve yet to tackle on the...
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 beloved indie bookstore, the Shop Around...
The 1998 romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, is about the brutal fight between a beloved indie bookstore, the Shop Around...
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 into ads that did more than just bring...
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. It’s a story about the great modernizer of...
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 a throwback to a simpler time—when...
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 we explore how it’s connected to today’s...
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 they were seeing it completely...
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 peculiar piece of clothing from the...
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 didn’t always work as intended—but they...
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 didn’t always work as intended—but they...
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 have access to this whole interview. Sign...
Slate Plus members have access to this whole interview. Sign...
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 was prosecuted for staging not one, but two...
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 was largely unknown until Betty and Barney...
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 Oscar. So, how did the most salable poet...
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 contradictions. In this episode, Alexandra Lange, the...
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 millions of books and records 50 years ago,...
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...
“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...
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...
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,...
“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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
Truly Tasteless Jokes were a series of joke books that dominated the bestsellers list during the 1980s....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
On part one of a special two-part Decoder Ring, we explore the decades-long friendship of...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Rubber Duckie
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How did the humble rubber duck become an icon of bath...
How did the humble rubber duck become an icon of bath...
The Shop Around the Corner
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The 1998 romantic comedy You've Got Mail starring Tom...
The 1998 romantic comedy You've Got Mail starring Tom...
Friend of Dorothy
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When Peter Mac was young, he found solace from his...
When Peter Mac was young, he found solace from his...
The Stowe-Byron Controversy
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When Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote an exposé of Lord...
When Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote an exposé of Lord...
Murphy's Law
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Nick Spark fell down a rabbit hole tracking down the...
Nick Spark fell down a rabbit hole tracking down the...
Gender Reveal Party
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Jenna Karvunidis invented the gender reveal party, but...
Jenna Karvunidis invented the gender reveal party, but...
Bart Simpson Mania
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In the early 1990's Bart Simpson became a breakout...
In the early 1990's Bart Simpson became a breakout...
Ice Cream Truck
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Why is the ice cream truck business so bananas? On...
Why is the ice cream truck business so bananas? On...
Pillow Talk
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Over the last half century the decorative pillow has...
Over the last half century the decorative pillow has...
Chuck E. Cheese Pizza War
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The King was an animatronic lounge singer who...
The King was an animatronic lounge singer who...
Videomate: Men
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Videomate: Men is a VHS tape released in 1987...
Videomate: Men is a VHS tape released in 1987...
Truck Nutz
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Truck Nutz are a brand name for the dangling plastic...
Truck Nutz are a brand name for the dangling plastic...
Baby Shark
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Baby Shark is an megaviral YouTube video, an...
Baby Shark is an megaviral YouTube video, an...
The Grifter
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Brett Johnson was a career criminal: a fraudster, a...
Brett Johnson was a career criminal: a fraudster, a...
Sad Jennifer Aniston
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Jennifer Aniston’s story had it all: Heartbreak,...
Jennifer Aniston’s story had it all: Heartbreak,...
The Incunabula Papers
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Ong's Hat, or The Incunabula Papers, is a conspiracy...
Ong's Hat, or The Incunabula Papers, is a conspiracy...
Hotel Art
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Hotel Art used to be one of the ultimate symbols of...
Hotel Art used to be one of the ultimate symbols of...
The Paper Doll Club
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Paper dolls were a ubiquitous part of children’s lives...
Paper dolls were a ubiquitous part of children’s lives...
The Basement Affair
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What are the real reasons people go on reality TV?...
What are the real reasons people go on reality TV?...
Clown Panic
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Decoder Ring is a podcast about cracking cultural...
Decoder Ring is a podcast about cracking cultural...
The Johnlock Conspiracy
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Who gets to decide if Sherlock Holmes is gay? For over...
Who gets to decide if Sherlock Holmes is gay? For over...
The Laff Box
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Welcome to Decoder Ring! Decoder Ring is a monthly...
Welcome to Decoder Ring! Decoder Ring is a monthly...
About this Podcast
Copyright
2018
Language
en
Categories
Society & Culture, Documentary, History