Decoder Ring

Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn.  Sign up now  to listen and support our work. Ong's Hat, or The Incunabula Papers, is a conspiracy theory that arose on the early internet. Combining cutting edge science, mysticism, and obvious hokum, it intrigued thousands of people who tried to find out what it all meant. Today we uncover the s...

Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn.  Sign up now  to listen and support our work. Hotel Art used to be one of the ultimate symbols of bad taste, it was often ugly, kitschy, and strange. Today, the art you find in a hotel is far less likely to be the result of one individual's poor taste, and much more likely to have passed through a...

Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn.  Sign up now  to listen and support our work. Paper dolls were a ubiquitous part of children’s lives for decades, and then mostly disappeared. David Wolfe was a boy growing up in the 1950’s, with paper dolls as his primary means of accessing a world of glamour and beauty that he didn’t see at home...

Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn.  Sign up now  to listen and support our work. What are the real reasons people go on reality TV? This episode follows the story of Ann Hirsch and Cathy Nardone, two women cast on VH1’s “Frank the Entertainer...In a Basement Affair”, a show about an adult man looking for love—while living in his pa...

Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn.  Sign up now  to listen and support our work. Decoder Ring is a podcast about cracking cultural mysteries. Every month host Willa Paskin,Slate’s TV critic, takes on a cultural question, object, idea, or habit and speak with experts,historians and obsessives to try and figure out where it comes fro...

Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn.  Sign up now  to listen and support our work. Who gets to decide if Sherlock Holmes is gay? For over a century, fans of Sherlock Holmes have been analyzing, debating, and creating new texts with Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters. Decoder Ring explores the Johnlock Conspiracy, a fan theory about the...

Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn.  Sign up now  to listen and support our work. Welcome to Decoder Ring! Decoder Ring is a monthly podcast about cracking cultural mysteries. Every episode we’ll take on a cultural object, idea, or habit and speak with experts, historians and obsessives to try to figure out where it comes from, what...