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.
- Website
- http://www.slate.com/decoderring
- Description
- 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.
- Language
- 🇬🇧 English
- last modified
- 2025-03-26 10:33
- last episode published
- 2025-03-26 07:00
- publication frequency
- 21.19 days
- Contributors
- Slate Podcasts
- Author
- Slate Podcasts
- Owner
- Explicit
- false
- Number of Episodes
- 120
- Rss-Feeds
- Detail page
- Categories
- Society & Culture Documentary History
Recommendations
Episodes
| Date | Title & Description | Contributors |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-03-26 |
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, soccer, coffee, Iceland, bees, oak trees, sand, chicke... |
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| 2025-03-12 | 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 oft... |
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| 2025-02-26 | 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 c... |
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| 2025-02-12 | 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 were risky and innovative, the killer app of their ti... |
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| 2025-01-29 | 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 incredibly corny and uncool. Insofar as the swing revi... |
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| 2025-01-15 | 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 viewing pleasure. Its role as a source of soothing, s... |
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| 2025-01-01 | 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. That study found that higher household income correl... |
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| 2024-12-18 | 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 fascinating questions. Why do grocery stores keep live lo... |
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| 2024-12-04 | 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 false memory syndrome. In this episode we track the ri... |
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| 2024-11-20 | 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 millions of records, appearing on TV daily, and fil... |
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