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.
51
Truly Tasteless Jokes
What's the difference between garbage and a girl from New Jersey?
43 min
52
The Philosophy of Vampires
In literature, the choice to become a vampire is a metaphor for transformative experiences.
31 min
53
You Just Lost The Game
When you think about the game, you lose the game.
21 min
54
The Alberta Rat War
Rats live wherever people live, with one exception: the Canadian province of Alberta.
37 min
55
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.
49 min
56
Selling Out
What happened to selling out?
46 min
57
Tattoo Flash
Today, four stories about tattoos whose meanings have shifted with the passage of years, decades, or centuries.
46 min
58
The Tootsie Shot
You know the Tootsie Shot. Why is it so sticky?
34 min
59
Who Killed The Segway?
This is the story of the invention and development of a potentially revolutionary device, how the hype got out of control, and how that speculation helped birth the modern internet.
41 min
60
The Sign Painter
What happens, to an artist—to anyone—when they’re good enough, but that’s not enough?
54 min
61
That Seattle Muzak Sound
Muzak, the purveyors of elevator music, had become a complete joke by the 1990’s when it found many of the players in the Seattle grunge scene working in its offices.
41 min
62
The Invention of Hydration
How did bottled water transform itself from a small, European luxury item to the single largest beverage category in America?
33 min
63
The Soap Opera Machine
We investigate the wild world of soap operas through the lens of one legendary, decades-long, ripped-from-the-headlines storyline.
48 min
64
Decoder Ring Presents The Sporkful’s Mission: I...
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
31 min
65
The Blue Steak Experiment
What took blue food so long to catch on?
37 min
66
The Cabbage Patch Kids Riots
How did a children'a toy inspire such bad adult behavior?
31 min
67
Jane Fonda's Workout, Part 2: Hanoi Jane's VHS ...
How did Hanoi Jane become Exercise Jane?
47 min
68
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.
52 min
69
Mystery of the Mullet
We track the rise and fall of the mullet, and the lexical quandary at its heart: who named the mullet?
45 min
70
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.
36 min
71
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.
34 min
72
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.
40 min
73
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.
33 min
74
Rubber Duckie
How did the humble rubber duck become an icon of bath time?
22 min
75
The Shop Around the Corner
The 1998 romantic comedy You've Got Mail starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan is about the brutal fight between an independent bookstore, The Shop Around the Corner, and Fox Books, an obvious Barnes & Noble stand-in.
35 min