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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 Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen.

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Decoder Ring

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, and off-putting. The answer takes us from ancient Greece to Nazi Germany to North Korea.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin. It was produced by Max Freedman. It was edited by Josh Levin and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Our intern is Phoebe Mulder.

Special thanks to the Works in Progress Podcast, where we first heard Atalanta talk about the dismal state of statuary today.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen.

Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required.

 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We Are Monumentally Bad at Statues

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 all, just someone walking down a crowded street. So why is it so sticky?

Some of the voices you’ll hear in this episode include James Sanders, author of Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies; cinematographer Adam Holender; producer Anna Wenger; assistant director Joe Reidy, author Christopher Bonanos, media and entertainment lawyer Sam Bayard, and location manager Mara Alcaly. Also thanks to Jason Bailey, Sam Levy, Glenn Kenny, Carlo Mirabella-Davis, J.D. Amato, David Sims, Bill Parker, Doug Brody, Sean Fennessey, and Jody Rosen.

This episode was produced by Willa Paskin and Benjamin Frisch. Decoder Ring is also produced by Max Freedman and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen.

Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required.

 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Tootsie Shot (Encore)

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 iconic steps, and why does every Australian know them?

Our producer Max Freedman put on his dancing shoes to get some answers. The global, century-spanning story of the Nutbush involves Australia, Tennessee, Denmark, primary schools, gay discos, and demonstrates that even the goofiest cultural touchstones can go surprisingly deep.

In this episode you’ll hear from culture journalists David Mack and Angus Kidman; Nutbush researchers Panizza Allmark and Jon Stratton; dance historians Erica Okamura and Richard Powers; Dr. Fiona Chatteur, Jeremy Santolin, and Brian Kerr.

This episode was written and produced by Max Freedman and edited by Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen.

Further Viewing

How to do ‘The Nutbush’ - Australian Line Dance 

Dancin’ the Madison on “The Buddy Deane Show” (1960)

Alley Cat Tutorial — Spark Physical Education

The Nutbush on Countdown (December 5, 1976)

Tina Turner — Nutbush City Limits, The Midnight Special (1973)

Tina Turner — Are You Breaking My Heart, Countdown (1980)

Tina Turner: How “The Best” Became Rugby League’s Anthem | ABC News

Tina Turner’s Electrifying 1993 NRL Grand Final Performance

Sources for This Episode

Allmark, Panizza, and Jon Stratton. “Doing the Nutbush: How Australia Got Its Very Own Line Dance.” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, vol. 39, no. 1, 2025, pp. 79–94.

Allmark, Panizza, and Jon Stratton. “The Nutbush Dance Reframed: Further Analysis Related to ‘Doing the Nutbush.’” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, vol. 39, no. 1, 2025, pp. 95–103.

Andrews, Shirley. Take Your Partners: Traditional Dancing in Australia. 3rd ed., Hyland House, 1979.

Bloomfield, Anne. “Health or Art? The Case for Dance in the Curriculum of British State Schools 1909–1919.” History of Education, vol. 36, no. 6, 2007, pp. 681–696.

Bloomfield, Anne. “The Quickening of the National Spirit: Cecil Sharp and the Pioneers of the Folk-Dance Revival in English State Schools (1900–26).” History of Education, vol. 30, no. 1, 2001, pp. 59–75.

Gbogbo, Mawunyo. “Tina Turner and Her Australian Connections: How The Best Became Rugby League’s Anthem and Why Is the Nutbush Mandatory at Gatherings?” ABC News, 24 May 2023.

Jones, Benjamin T. “Australian Politics Explainer: The White Australia Policy.” The Conversation, 9 Apr. 2017.

Kidman, Angus. “Tina Turner: How Australia Saved Her Career.” Angus Kidman, 13 Aug. 2023.

Meiners, Jeff. So We Can Dance? In Pursuit of an Inclusive Dance Curriculum for the Primary School Years in Australia. 2017. University of South Australia, Doctor of Education thesis.

Spencer, Eliza. “Australia and the Nutbush: The Quest for the Origin of a Cultural Phenomenon Goes On.” The Guardian, 5 May 2024.

Ward, Mary. “The Mysterious Allure of the Nutbush and Why the Dance Is Uniquely Australian.” Sydney Morning Herald, 25 May 2023.

Zhuang, Yan. “Australia Remembered Tina Turner with a Dance.” New York Times, 25 May 2023.

Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required.

 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tina Turner and the Dance That Conquered Australia

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 baffled for years by a strange sight: dozens of tiny rubber duckies riding on the dashboard of Jeeps. What started this craze, and why Jeeps of all cars?

Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen.

Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required.

 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Preview: Decoder Rings Back | Duck, Duck, Jeep

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 Slate, who visited Florida to check on the orange and write about its demise. You’ll also hear from Gary Mormino, Florida lover, expert, and professor emeritus of Florida Studies at the University of South Florida.

This episode was produced by Katie Shepherd and Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. It was edited by Josh Levin. Decoder Ring is also produced by Willa Paskin and Max Freedman. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen.

Sources for This Episode

Hamilton, Alissa. Squeezed: What You Don't Know about Orange Juice, Yale University Press, 2010.

Hussey, Scott D. “The Sunshine State's Golden Fruit: Florida And The Orange,1930-1960,” USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Apr. 2, 2010.

McPhee, John. Oranges, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967.

Mormino, Gary. “The enduring but endangered symbol of Florida,” The Gainesville Sun, Apr. 3, 2016.

Sammon, Alex. “Who Killed The Florida Orange?” Slate, Apr. 20, 2026.

Walkey, Will and Amory Sivertson. “The fall of Florida citrus,” On Point, Aug. 19, 2025

Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required.

 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

No Pulp: The Killing of the Florida Orange

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 CEO Andrew Begnoché, and linguist Dr. Rebecca Clift.

This episode was produced by Katie Shepherd and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Decoder Ring is also produced by Max Freedman. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

Special thanks to Nicole Holliday, and to Leilehua Lanzilotti, whose website Shaken Not Stuttered is a fantastic resource about extended techniques for strings.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen.

Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required.

 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mailbag: Spooky Strings, Phone Menu Options, and Eye Rolls

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 Money. Then, we get help from Mark Blyth, a political economist at Brown University who teaches about the architecture and plumbing of global finance.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin and Max Freedman and produced by Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd and Supervising Producer Evan Chung. Merritt Jacob is our Senior Technical Director. Thank you to Lizzie O’Leary.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen.

Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required.

 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How to Make Dollars Make Sense

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 lonelygirl15 we thought you’d be interested to hear it.

This episode was written and reported by Evan Chung. It was edited by Laura Bennett. The host of One Year is Josh Levin. Madeline Ducharme was our assistant producer. Additional production help came from Cheyna Roth, with editorial direction by Lowen Liu and Gabriel Roth. Mixing by Merritt Jacob, our Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen.

Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required.

 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One Year: 1995 | Hitting the Spot

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 fandoms, and the knowledge that you can’t always believe your eyes.

In this episode, you’ll hear from some of the people who investigated lonelygirl15 way back in 2006: culture critic Virginia Heffernan, who writes the Substack Magic + Loss and co-hosts the podcast Omnishambles; entertainment journalist Richard Rushfield of The Ankler; producer Jenni Powell; and one-time cybersleuth Chris Patterson. We also speak with the people involved in making lonelygirl15: Miles Beckett, Mesh Flinders, Jessica Rose Phillipps, and Amanda Goodfried.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin and Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s Supervising Producer. Decoder Ring is also produced by Willa Paskin, Katie Shepherd, and Max Freedman. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

Thank you to Greg Goodfried, Matt Foremski, and Tom Foremski. Special thanks to Ryan Broderick and Grant Irving of the podcast Panic World, who introduced Willa to the lonelygirl15 story on a recent episode of their show and suggested it might make a good topic for Decoder Ring.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Sources for This Episode

Cresci, Elena. “Lonelygirl15: how one mysterious vlogger changed the internet,” The Guardian, June 16, 2006.

Davis, Joshua. “The Secret World of Lonelygirl,” WIRED, Dec. 2006.

Falconer, Ellen. “An oral history of lonelygirl15,” RNZ, June 16, 2016.

Flemming, Brian. “Arguments for a real LG15 fall short,” Brian Flemming's Weblog, Aug. 25, 2006.

Foremski, Matt and Tom Foremski. “SVW Exclusive: The identity of LonelyGirl15,” Silicon Valley Watcher, Sep. 11, 2006.

Foremski, Tom. “How the secret identity of LonelyGirl15 was found,” Silicon Valley Watcher, Sep. 12, 2006.

Foremski, Tom. “The Hunt for LonelyGirl15: Life in a blogger household…,” Silicon Valley Watcher, Sep. 12, 2006.

Glaister, Dan. “Cult blog a fake, admit 'lonelygirl' creators,” The Guardian, Sep. 9, 2006.

Heffernan, Virginia and Tom Zeller Jr. “The Lonelygirl That Really Wasn’t,” New York Times, Sep. 13, 2006.

Heffernan, Virginia. “A Pause for Some Words From Bree,” New York Times, Aug. 23, 2006.

Heffernan, Virginia. “Sweet, Weird, Fraud or Other,” New York Times, Aug. 24, 2006.

“LGPedia,” LG15, 2016.

“lonelygirl15 and when lies could be fun,” Panic World, Feb. 4, 2026.

“Lonely Girl And All Her Friends,” On the Media, Sep. 1, 2006.

Nudd, Tim. “Lonelygirl15 still a mystery, for now,” ADWEEK, Sep. 1, 2006.

Rushfield, Richard and Claire Hoffman. “Lonelygirl15 Video Blog Is Brainchild of 3 Filmmakers,” Los Angeles Times, Sep. 13, 2006.

Rushfield, Richard and Claire Hoffman. “Mystery Fuels Huge Popularity of Web’s Lonelygirl15,” Los Angeles Times, Sep. 8, 2006.

Wendt, Milo A. “LonelyGirl15: It's Not So Lonely In The Bay Area,” milowent, Aug. 30, 2006.

Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen.

Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required.

 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who Was Lonelygirl15?

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 motives—except for the ending, which, unlike in a Holmes story, isn’t very neat.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin. It was produced and edited by Benjamin Frisch, who also created the episode art. Shasha Leonárd provided production assistance, and Danielle Hewitt helped us fact check the episode. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd, Max Freedman, and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen.

Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required.

 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Johnlock Conspiracy (Encore)

When you think of an alien abduction, what do you picture? Humanoid creatures, medical experiments, lost memories retrieved through hypnosis? That narrative was largely unknown until Betty and Barney Hill went public about their own alien abduction in the 1960s. Betty Hill’s niece, Kathleen Marden, recounts how the story went viral and her aunt and uncle became unwitting celebrities. Then professors Susan Lepselter, Chris Bader, Joseph O. Baker and Stephanie Kelley-Romano explain how the Hills’ alien abduction changed science fiction forever.

Thanks to Eric Molinsky for bringing us this story that originally aired on his terrific podcast Imaginary Worlds. Eric’s got a lot more stories like this one so subscribe wherever you listen. 

Decoder Ring is written by Willa Paskin and produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd. Derek John is Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com

If you love the show and want to support us, consider joining Slate Plus. With Slate Plus you get ad-free podcasts, bonus episodes, and total access to all of Slate’s journalism.

 

Need to set up your Slate Plus feed? If you subscribed through Slate.com, check out our FAQ at slate.com/podcastfaqs for easy instructions. Members subscribed via Apple Podcasts get automatic access—no setup required.

 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The First Alien Abductees

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