Podcast · Society & Culture

Decoder Ring

by Slate Podcasts · English · Society & Culture

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. Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of

New episodes: Every two weeks
Typical length: 47 min
Latest: 14 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

14 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 1 minNew

Gandhi Never Said “Be the Change”

Few inspirational phrases are quoted more often than Mahatma Gandhi’s “Be the change you want to see in the world.” It shows up on t-shirts, bumper stickers, even tattooed on people’s bodies. Life coaches, leadership trainers, and American presidents constantly cite it. There is one problem with this quotation, however: Gandhi never said it. And the story of how the “be the change” actually came to be—according to its true originator—is stranger, more intricate, and more astounding than you could ever expect. In this episode, Decoder Ring’s Evan Chung speaks with Arleen Lorrance , the former…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

7 Oct 2026 · 8 min
Preview: Decoder Rings Back | The Second Spice
One of the many perks of subscribing to Decoder Ring Plus is access to every episode of Decoder Rings Back, our member-exclusive series where host Willa Paskin calls up a listener to answer their question about a cultural mystery directly. This week we’re offering a taste of the latest Decoder Rings Back, where Willa tries to clear up our listener Samantha’s culinary confusion: Why, of all spices in the world, is black pepper always on the dinner table, right there next to salt? It’s a delectable story that involves ancient Rome, Louis XIV, and Salem, Massachusetts. But to hear the whole…
E136 · 23 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 4 min
Bridget in the Buff
In the early 1970s, a jigsaw puzzle of a cheerful, young, naked, fat woman known only as “Bridget in the Buff” arrived in stores all over America. It was just the first of countless Bridget-related merchandise that would be sold around the world for the next decade: calendars , playing cards, coloring books, cookbooks , and much more. Bridget was everywhere. But who was she? In this episode of Decoder Ring, the real Bridget reveals all. Her name is Dawn Brooks, and she takes us through the unusual path that led her to pose nude for scores of popular products. How does it feel to be a gag…
E135 · 9 Sep 2026 · 59 min
What Even Is a “Podcast” Anymore?
Podcasts are everywhere. They’re more popular and influential than they’ve ever been. But at the same time, what makes a podcast a “podcast” has never been more confusing. Until recently, the definition of “podcast” was clear: audio distributed over the internet. A podcast was something you listened to, not something you watched. But now, almost all of the most popular podcasts have video, too. And most of these podcasts share a video-friendly format: two or three people chatting behind big bulky microphones. You may have noticed that our podcast, Decoder Ring, does not have video, so these…
26 Aug 2026 · 43 min
McGruff Takes a Bite Out of Crime, Part 2 (Encore)
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 did work their way into the long term memories of the kids who heard them. In the second episode of our two-part series , originally released in 2022, on the weird world of PSAs and very special episodes, we look at how McGruff’s Smart Kids Album influenced everything from straight edge hardcore to a couple’s wedding playlist. We’ll hear from Sarah Hubbard , Daniel Danger , Joseph Cappella , David…
12 Aug 2026 · 34 min
McGruff Takes a Bite Out of Crime, Part 1 (Encore)
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 did work their way into the long term memories of the kids who heard them. In the first of two episodes, originally released in 2022, we take a look at PSAs and their strange afterlife through the lens of a trench-coat wearing bloodhound and his bizarre, yet catchy anti-drug songs. We’ll talk to Dan Danger , Sherry Nemmers , Joseph Cappella , David Farber , Mike Hawes, and Robin Nelson to discover…
E134 · 29 Jul 2026 · 52 min
The Fight Over Sunlight
The sun has always been a hot topic. For centuries, we’ve flip-flopped over whether our health depends on soaking up its rays—or shielding ourselves from them. The current conventional wisdom is clear: Avoid sunburns at all costs, using shade, hats, long sleeves, and the highest SPF sunscreen your drugstore has to offer. But in a historical sense, that advice is pretty new. Not long ago, doctors told parents to slather babies in oil and let them roast in the afternoon sun. Tanning was once medically prescribed. Though we’ve lived under it for all of human history, we’ve never quite figured…
E133 · 15 Jul 2026 · 49 min
Weapons of Map Destruction
Most of us use GPS—the Global Positioning System—on a daily basis: to find our location when we’re driving, running, shopping, dating, and so much more. But GPS is even more important, and more vulnerable, than you think. In the last few years, GPS interference has been reported all over the world, from war zones to shipping routes to public squares. What was once the fanciful plot of a Bond movie —bad guy manipulates GPS to start World War III—is increasingly plausible. How did the world come to rely so heavily on such an unreliable system? In this episode of Decoder Ring, host Willa Paskin…
E132 · 1 Jul 2026 · 49 min
We Are Monumentally Bad at Statues
It seems like the only time you hear about new statues these days is when something goes horribly wrong. Unfortunate bronze renditions of Lucille Ball, Cristiano Ronaldo, Dwayne Wade, and many others are always going viral, becoming a fixture of late-night shows and mocking comment sections. Is the internet too harsh a critic? Or is American statuary a total bust? In this episode of Decoder Ring, host Willa Paskin talks to artist Atalanta Arden-Miller about what’s happened to one of the oldest artistic traditions in the world—why so many contemporary statues turn out off-center, off-kilter,…
17 Jun 2026 · 36 min
The Tootsie Shot (Encore)
You know the Tootsie Shot. It’s that image that pops up all the time in movies set in a dense city: a really busy midtown street, everyone going somewhere—and smack in the middle of it all is the protagonist. You can find it in Working Girl, Midnight Cowboy, Wall Street , Heartburn , Elf , Bridget Jones’s Diary , The Devil Wears Prada , The Wolf of Wall Street , and so many more. But while it’s one of the most recognizable camera shots in all of film, it only amounts to a short, transitional moment, often in the middle of a montage, and sometimes lasting for a couple seconds. It is, after…
E131 · 3 Jun 2026 · 49 min
Tina Turner and the Dance That Conquered Australia
In Australia, no wedding or school dance is complete without the Nutbush, Australia’s unofficial national dance. The Nutbush – a simple line dance to the song “Nutbush City Limits,” by Ike and Tina Turner – has become as stereotypically Australian as kangaroos, boomerangs, and Vegemite. And yet, hardly anyone outside of Australia even knows the Nutbush exists. Here at Decoder Ring, we certainly didn’t – until we started getting emails from Australians asking us to investigate its origins. How did an American song become the soundtrack for an Australian national tradition? Who invented the…
27 May 2026 · 10 min
Preview: Decoder Rings Back | Duck, Duck, Jeep
Earlier this year we debuted Decoder Rings Back, our new feature exclusively for Decoder Ring Plus subscribers. In each installment, Willa gets a listener on the phone and tries her best to answer their question about a cultural mystery. We have been having a blast making these episodes, and if you haven’t heard them, we think you’re missing out. So in the hopes of instilling some FOMO that motivates you to support the work we do here by becoming a Decoder Ring Plus subscriber, here’s a sneak peek at the latest installment. This time, we hear from Julia Latino in Massachusetts who’s been…
E130 · 20 May 2026 · 41 min
No Pulp: The Killing of the Florida Orange
Like the palm tree, the Everglades, Disney World, and the “Florida Man,” the orange is a classic symbol of the Sunshine State. But maybe not for much longer. Production has declined to catastrophic levels, a decrease of more than 95% in less than 25 years. It’s a produce murder mystery—and Decoder Ring is tagging along with reporter Alex Sammon to crack the case. The suspects include insects, hurricanes, mortgage-backed securities, and the American habit of not reckoning with enormous, load-bearing flaws until it’s way too late. In this episode, you’ll hear from Alex, a feature writer at…
E129 · 6 May 2026 · 48 min
Mailbag: Spooky Strings, Phone Menu Options, and Eye Rolls
We are lucky to get fantastic questions from our listeners here at Decoder Ring, and in this episode, we’re going to open up our mailbag to answer three of them. What are the origins of an eerie horror film string motif? Why do companies insist on telling callers to “listen closely” to menu options that could not possibly have changed? And when did we start using the indispensable eye roll? In this episode, you’ll hear from historical musicologist Frank Hentschel , as well as Eli Spindel , artistic director of the String Orchestra of Brooklyn . We also speak with writer Nick Greene , Holdcom…
E128 · 22 Apr 2026 · 35 min
How to Make Dollars Make Sense
Money is everywhere. Money influences just about everything. We think about money all the time. But how much do we really know about it? In this episode of Decoder Ring, we explore the obscure historical forces that make our money what it is and behave the way it does. We ask two simple-sounding questions with surprising answers: Why is our money called the dollar—and where are those dollars really coming from? First, you’ll hear from Brendan Greeley , a veteran finance reporter turned economic historian, and author of the new book, The Almighty Dollar: 500 Years of the World’s Most Powerful…
17 Apr 2026 · 58 min
One Year: 1995 | Hitting the Spot
Last week we aired an episode about lonelygirl15, one of the first proper YouTube stars, and perhaps the most famous example of playing around with the boundaries of fiction and truth on the internet. But it was not the first. In 1995, aspiring filmmakers created the first ever soap opera on the Web, on a site called The Spot. Hollywood saw it as the future of entertainment. But a fan-led revolt showed that interactivity sometimes has a price. Evan Chung explained the rise and fall of The Spot in a 2021 episode of the Slate podcast One Year . The overlaps and echoes are so strong with…
E127 · 8 Apr 2026 · 59 min
Who Was Lonelygirl15?
In the summer of 2006, a teenage girl began posting video diaries to a then-new site called YouTube under the handle lonelygirl15. Within weeks she was a phenomenon—even though no one knew the truth of who she really was. The frenzied quest to change that, to solve the mystery of lonelygirl15, would ultimately land her on the front page of newspapers and the covers of magazines. Twenty years on, lonelygirl15 is both an artifact of an earlier online era and an origin point for the internet as we know it: a place full of video diaries, parasocial relationships, influencers, hyper-engaged…
25 Mar 2026 · 53 min
The Johnlock Conspiracy (Encore)
For over a century, fans of Sherlock Holmes have been analyzing, debating, and creating new texts with Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters. But when a fan theory emerged about the BBC TV show Sherlock that posited the inevitability of a gay romance between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson—it wreaked havoc on the community. In this episode, which originally aired in 2018, we explore the Johnlock Conspiracy, with help from historians, journalists, and the fans at the heart of the controversial idea. It’s almost a Holmesian tale itself, full of brilliant theories, false leads and mysterious…
E126 · 11 Mar 2026 · 46 min
Was "Eyes Wide Shut" a Warning?
When Eyes Wide Shut opened in the summer of 1999, it was widely considered a disappointment. This final film from legendary director Stanley Kubrick had been sold as an erotic thriller, and potentially even a peek into the real sex lives of its then-married stars, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. But Eyes Wide Shut was stranger than that: a meditative art film whose much-hyped orgy scene is more creepy than sexy, run by a cabal of rich and powerful men who prey on young women. But Eyes Wide Shut has received a burst of new attention in the last few years, amid constant revelations about a…
E125 · 25 Feb 2026 · 45 min
A Prune by Any Other Name
The delicious, healthful prune has long had a cross to bear: It’s best known for making people poop. In the late 1990s, the California Prune Board set out on a quixotic mission to amend this sales-flattening reputation. It would attempt to rechristen this ancient fruit in the hopes the prune could one day be as unencumbered as an apricot, a raisin, or a fig. In a world where every product and person increasingly believes it’s one good rebrand away from changing how they are seen, the story of the prune’s attempt to become the “dried plum” is a telling tale about the impossibility of escaping…
E124 · 11 Feb 2026 · 43 min
Making Coal Cute Again
Three weeks ago, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum shared an unusual tweet : a cartoon image of himself with his arm draped around a giant, anthropomorphized lump of coal. This piece of coal has big googly eyes and a smudge of a nose, and is wearing a safety vest and a hard hat. He is, frankly, adorable—and he has a name: Coalie. When Coalie first appeared on the internet, he went viral—ridiculed on social media, in newsletters, and even on late night talk shows . And that’s because this big-eyed, cute piece of coal was widely understood to be coal propaganda, a tool to soften the…
E123 · 28 Jan 2026 · 37 min
Is Culture Stuck?
It’s a weird time for culture. There is more of it than ever before, it’s more accessible than ever before, but so little of it feels original. New movies are based on old stories, new songs are recycling old hooks, and fashion trends are cycling so fast that everything’s in. Has our culture grown stagnant? The author and culture critic W. David Marx thinks so. His new book, Blank Space , argues that there is a “blank space” in the 21st century where cultural innovation should be. In this episode, David explains to Willa how culture change worked in the 20th century, what changed after the…
E122 · 14 Jan 2026 · 25 min
Decoder Rings Back | Why the Mona Lisa?
We are really lucky to get lots of listener suggestions for the show, more good questions than we can possibly answer in a mailbag episode once or twice a year. So we’re starting a new segment we call… Decoder Rings Back! Every month, host Willa Paskin will personally call up a listener to answer their question. In this inaugural installment of Decoder Rings Back, Willa calls up listener Dustin Malek about his cultural mystery: Why did the Mona Lisa , of all paintings, become the most famous in the world, bar none? Willa shares the story of daring heist that turned Leonardo da Vinci’s…
31 Dec 2025 · 2 min
A New Year’s Message from Willa
We can’t make this show without you, our listeners. Today, you can help support Decoder Ring – and get a really good deal. To join Slate Plus for just $59/year, visit slate.com/decoderplus on December 31st and type in the promo code DECODER50 at checkout. Slate Plus members get to listen to episodes of Decoder Ring (and all your favorite Slate podcasts!) with no ads, and get access to exclusive bonus episodes. You can join Slate Plus at any time from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify , but the discount code DECODER50 will only work through the end of 2025. Subscribe…
E121 · 17 Dec 2025 · 1 hr 2 min
Mailbag: Yo-Yos, Sandboxes, and Encores
Decoder Ring listeners write in with some excellent mysteries, and for our last episode of the year we’re solving three of them. Why do children play in boxes full of sand? Why do rock bands pretend like the show is over when everybody knows they’re coming back for an encore? And what was up with those school assemblies where you’d get to skip class to learn about…yo-yos? The voices you’ll hear in this episode include yo-yo masters ”Dazzling Dave” Schulte and Dale Oliver , children’s book author Rob Peñas , Pulitzer Prize-winning design critic Alexandra Lange , and music journalists Brian…
3 Dec 2025 · 35 min
“Videomate: Men” (Encore)
Videomate: Men was a VHS tape released in 1987 featuring 60 single men pitching themselves as dates to women on the other side of the TV screen: “The love of your life could be on your TV tonight!” the box reads. In retrospect, Videomate: Men is a bizarre and hilarious time capsule, but at the time it was one of many manifestations of what was known as video dating. To find out how anyone thought this was a good idea, Decoder Ring examines the weird and forgotten world of video dating in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s to find out why video dating once seemed like the future—and if that future is…
E120 · 19 Nov 2025 · 40 min
How Protein Muscled Its Way to the Top
Americans are currently besotted with protein. It’s touted as being good for muscle growth, weight loss, skincare, mental acuity, longevity, and much else besides. It’s sold to men, women, children, the elderly— you can even buy protein for your pets. The protein supplement market alone is worth $21 billion and growing—and extra protein is being added to coffee, cereal, pasta, beer, ice cream, and popcorn . But as frenzied as we currently are about protein, this is not the first protein boom—or even the second. Protein has been promoted as a charismatic, cure-all nutrient for nearly two…
12 Nov 2025 · 48 min
The Slate Culture Gift Guide
Hark, the holiday season is upon us—and with it the most solemn of festive traditions: a gift guide! In this video and podcast special, Slate hosts Dana Stevens, Chris Molanphy, and Willa Paskin beam-in from their collective hearths to deliver unto the internet their favorite gifts for culture lovers this holiday. In addition to sharing gifts, they also discuss the cultural artifact that is the “holiday gift guide,” and its history going back to the early 20th century, up to the modern day. See the entirety of the 1910 gift guide Our Special Holiday Gift-Book from Greenhut-Siegel Cooper, and…
E119 · 5 Nov 2025 · 51 min
Cozy Autumn Mysteries
Autumn may have more cozy signifiers than any other season—though we all have our own favorites. Maybe for you it’s sweater weather, football games, spooky season, apple picking, leaf peeping, or mainlining candy corn. Whatever it is, in today’s episode we’re looking closely at three of these autumnal staples. First, we get to the bottom of a recurring complaint about the taste of the pumpkin spice latte. Then we gaze deep inside the enigma hiding inside colorful fall leaves. Finally we ask some hard-hitting questions about the seasonal availability of an elusive cookie. Snuggle up and…
E118 · 22 Oct 2025 · 47 min
The Red String Board Conspiracy
There’s a ubiquitous prop in just about every police procedural and conspiracy thriller: a cork board pinned with documents, newspaper clippings, and Polaroid photos, all connected by a web of red string. They go by many names, including pin boards, string boards, evidence boards, investigation walls, conspiracy walls, and walls of crazy. These boards can be vehicles of insight or manifestations of madness—and in many cases, both. But where did they come from? And can they really solve a crime? In this episode, we try to unwind the red string board all the way to its center. To aide in our…

About Decoder Ring

Decoder Ring is a English society & culture podcast from Slate Podcasts. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Slate Podcasts
Language: English
Category: Society & Culture
New episodes: Every two weeks
Typical length: 47 min
Latest episode: 14 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1376577202
Rights: The Slate Group

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