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.
76
Spring 2022 Teaser
Decoder Ring's upcoming season
1 min
77
Custer's Revenge
Custer's Revenge is widely considered one of the worst video games ever made.
41 min
78
The Fame That Got Away
Today on Decoder Ring: Three stories about fame, and one about monkeys.
37 min
79
Truly Tasteless Jokes
What's the difference between garbage and a girl from New Jersey?
43 min
80
The Philosophy of Vampires
In literature, the choice to become a vampire is a metaphor for transformative experiences.
31 min
81
You Just Lost The Game
When you think about the game, you lose the game.
21 min
82
The Alberta Rat War
Rats live wherever people live, with one exception: the Canadian province of Alberta.
37 min
83
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
84
Selling Out
What happened to selling out?
46 min
85
Tattoo Flash
Today, four stories about tattoos whose meanings have shifted with the passage of years, decades, or centuries.
46 min
86
The Tootsie Shot
You know the Tootsie Shot. Why is it so sticky?
34 min
87
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
88
The Sign Painter
What happens, to an artist—to anyone—when they’re good enough, but that’s not enough?
54 min
89
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
90
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
91
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
92
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
93
The Blue Steak Experiment
What took blue food so long to catch on?
37 min
94
The Cabbage Patch Kids Riots
How did a children'a toy inspire such bad adult behavior?
31 min
95
Jane Fonda's Workout, Part 2: Hanoi Jane's VHS ...
How did Hanoi Jane become Exercise Jane?
47 min
96
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
97
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
98
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
99
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
100
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