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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

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.

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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.

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

The Johnlock Conspiracy (Encore)

When Eyes Wide Shut opened in the summer of 1999, it was widely considered a disappointment. This final film from legendary director Stanley Kubrick had been sold as an erotic thriller, and potentially even a peek into the real sex lives of its then-married stars, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. But Eyes Wide Shut was stranger than that: a meditative art film whose much-hyped orgy scene is more creepy than sexy, run by a cabal of rich and powerful men who prey on young women.

But Eyes Wide Shut has received a burst of new attention in the last few years, amid constant revelations about a real-life cabal of rich and powerful men who prey on young women. Across the internet, cinema sleuths have been asking: is it possible Eyes Wide Shut was not fictional? Was Stanley Kubrick trying to warn the world about a real conspiracy? And if so… was he murdered for it? 

In this episode of Decoder Ring, we follow Lane Brown—a lifelong Kubrick fan and features writer for New York Magazine—as he investigates this conspiracy theory and what it says about how we deal with ugly facts and murky fictions.

This episode was written and produced by Max Freedman and edited by Willa Paskin. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd 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.

Sources for This Episode

Barbezat, Michael. “‘Pizzagate’ and the Nocturnal Ritual Fantasy: Imaginary Cults, Fake News, and Real Violence,” The Public Medievalist, May 4, 2017.

Brown, Lane. “The Eyes Wide Shut Conspiracy,” New York Magazine, Dec. 17, 2025.

Ebiri, Bilge. “An Oral History of an Orgy,” New York Magazine, June 27, 2019.

Nicholson, Amy. “The Year Tom Cruise Gave Not One but Two Dangerously Vulnerable Performances,” The New York Times, Aug. 27, 2024.

Raftery, Brian. “Dream Team: Cruise, Kidman, Kubrick, and the making of Eyes Wide Shut,” New York Magazine, Apr. 15, 2019.

Shapiro, Lila. “What I Learned After Watching Eyes Wide Shut 100 Times,” New York Magazine, July 1, 2019. 

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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Was "Eyes Wide Shut" a Warning?

The delicious, healthful prune has long had a cross to bear: It’s best known for making people poop. In the late 1990s, the California Prune Board set out on a quixotic mission to amend this sales-flattening reputation. It would attempt to rechristen this ancient fruit in the hopes the prune could one day be as unencumbered as an apricot, a raisin, or a fig. 

In a world where every product and person increasingly believes it’s one good rebrand away from changing how they are seen, the story of the prune’s attempt to become the “dried plum” is a telling tale about the impossibility of escaping who you really are—and the freedom that comes with self-acceptance. 

You’ll hear from Richard Peterson, retired Executive Director of the California Prune Board; food writer and chef David Liebovitz; lawyer and lobbyist Dan Haley; and Kiaran Locy, Director of Brand and Industry Communications at the California Prune Board.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin. It was edited by Evan Chung, our supervising producer. It was produced by Katie Shepherd. Decoder Ring is also produced by 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

Barry, Dave. Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway, Ballantine Books, 2002. 

Brasher, Philip. “FDA Approves Prune Name Change,” ABC News, Feb. 1, 2001. 

Brasher, Philip. “Where's the beef? Kids give prune burgers the taste test,” Associated Press, Jan 29, 2002. 

Cimons, Marlene. “A New Wrinkle for the Prune Industry,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 21, 1999.

Crespi, John M., Harry M. Kaiser, Julian M. Alston, and Richard J. Sexton. “The Evaluation of Prune Promotion by the California Dried Plum Board,” The Economics of Commodity Promotion Programs: Lessons from California, Peter Lang USA, 2005. 

Davis, Glenn. “French History in Your City: San Jose, California - the Pellier Brothers,” Yale National Initiative, Sep. 2015. 

Fabricant, Florence. “In France, the Prune Holds a Noble Station,” The New York Times, Oct. 31, 2001.

Fabricant, Florence. “Responsible Party: Richard Peterson; Rejuvenating The Humble Prune,” The New York Times, Aug. 13, 2000. 

Fabricant, Florence. “Underapprecaited: The Humble Prune,” The New York Times, Oct. 12, 1983.

A Fortune In Two Old Trunks. Sunsweet, 1947. 

Fullan, Genevieve. “In Defense of Prunes,” Eater, Jun 21, 2022. 

Gellene, Denise. “New Wrinkle in an Old Story,” Los Angeles Times, Oct 16, 1997. 

Good Wrinkles. Sunsweet, 1951. 

Kamen, Al. “Sunday in the Loop: Plum Outta Luck,” Washington Post, Dec. 11, 1999. 

Koger, Chris. “Dried plums no longer: California prunes have new brand,” The Packer, Nov. 15, 2022. 

Lucas, Greg. “Who'd Have Thought? Pruneburgers / Juicy, tender and low-fat, they're surprising hits in school cafeterias,” San Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 9, 1999.

Martin, Ronda Beaman. “Stan Freberg—His Credits and Contributions to Advertising,” M.A. Thesis, Texas Tech University, Dec. 1986. 

McKay, Leonard. “Louis Pellier,” San Jose Inside, Sep. 25, 2006.

Morse, Rob. “Hold the prunes, hold the lettuce,” San Francisco Examiner, July 28, 1999. 

“Prune gets $10 million makeover -- as dried plum,” CNN, Sep. 13, 2000.

Rao, Tejal. “In Praise of the Prune,” The New York Times Magazine, Feb. 16, 2017.

Roach, Mary. “The power of prunes,” Salon, Nov. 5, 1999.

Waters, Michael. “When the Dried Plum Lobby Tried to Make Pruneburgers Happen,” Atlas Obscura, April 13, 2018. 

Zasky, Jason. “Prunes: Turning Over a New Leaf,” Failure Magazine, Apr. 16, 2002.

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A Prune by Any Other Name

Three weeks ago, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum shared an unusual tweet: a cartoon image of himself with his arm draped around a giant, anthropomorphized lump of coal. This piece of coal has big googly eyes and a smudge of a nose, and is wearing a safety vest and a hard hat. He is, frankly, adorable—and he has a name: Coalie.

When Coalie first appeared on the internet, he went viral—ridiculed on social media, in newsletters, and even on late night talk shows. And that’s because this big-eyed, cute piece of coal was widely understood to be coal propaganda, a tool to soften the coal industry’s image.

But the truth about Coalie is more complicated. His origins tell a story about what it’s like for federal employees to try to do their work while navigating the Trump administration’s agenda. Coalie may be widely seen as a mascot for coal mining, but that’s not what he was made for.

In this episode, you’ll hear from Simone Randolph, Director of Communications for the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE); Sara Eckert, formerly of OSMRE; Slate staff writer Nitish Pahwa; and Leah Stokes, who researches climate and energy policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara and co-hosts the podcast A Matter of Degrees.

Thank you to Daniel Raimi, Tony Ho Tran, and Hannah Northey.

This episode was written by Willa Paskin and Evan Chung and produced by Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. Our show is also produced by Max Freedman and Katie Shepherd. 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.

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

Making Coal Cute Again

It’s a weird time for culture. There is more of it than ever before, it’s more accessible than ever before, but so little of it feels original. New movies are based on old stories, new songs are recycling old hooks, and fashion trends are cycling so fast that everything’s in. 

Has our culture grown stagnant? The author and culture critic W. David Marx thinks so. 

His new book, Blank Space, argues that there is a “blank space” in the 21st century where cultural innovation should be. In this episode, David explains to Willa how culture change worked in the 20th century, what changed after the turn of the millennium, and what we might do about it. 

This episode was produced by Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is also produced by Willa Paskin, Katie Shepherd, 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.

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

Is Culture Stuck?

We are really lucky to get lots of listener suggestions for the show, more good questions than we can possibly answer in a mailbag episode once or twice a year. So we’re starting a new segment we call… Decoder Rings Back! Every month, host Willa Paskin will personally call up a listener to answer their question. 

In this inaugural installment of Decoder Rings Back, Willa calls up listener Dustin Malek about his cultural mystery: Why did the Mona Lisa, of all paintings, become the most famous in the world, bar none? Willa shares the story of daring heist that turned Leonardo da Vinci’s enigmatic smiling subject into a celebrity.

Future episodes of Decoder Rings Back will only be available to Slate Plus subscribers. So if you want to be sure not to miss them, sign up for Slate Plus! You’ll get exclusive episodes and ad-free listening not just on our show, but 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. 

This episode was produced by Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd 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.

Sources for This Episode

Cumming, Laura. “The man who stole the Mona Lisa,” The Guardian, August 5, 2011.

Hoobler, Dorothy, and Thomas Hoobler. “Stealing Mona Lisa,” Vanity Fair, April 16, 2009.

Hoobler, Dorothy, and Thomas Hoobler. The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection, Bison Books, 2010.

Isaacson, Walter. Leonardo da Vinci, Simon & Schuster, 2018.

Roberts, Sam. “Happy Birthday to the Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa and Took It to Italy,” The New York Times, October 7, 2022.

Sassoon, Donald. “Mona Lisa: The Best-Known Girl in the Whole Wide World,” History Workshop Journal, Spring 2001.

Sassoon, Donald. Mona Lisa: The History of the World’s Most Famous Painting, HarperCollins, 2016.

“The Theft That Made The 'Mona Lisa' A Masterpiece,” NPR, July 30, 2011.

Zug, James. “Stolen: How the Mona Lisa Became the World’s Most Famous Painting,” Smithsonian Magazine, June 15, 2011.

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Decoder Rings Back | Why the Mona Lisa?

We can’t make this show without you, our listeners. Today, you can help support Decoder Ring – and get a really good deal. To join Slate Plus for just $59/year, visit slate.com/decoderplus on December 31st and type in the promo code DECODER50 at checkout. Slate Plus members get to listen to episodes of Decoder Ring (and all your favorite Slate podcasts!) with no ads, and get access to exclusive bonus episodes.

You can join Slate Plus at any time from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, but the discount code DECODER50 will only work through the end of 2025. Subscribe today at slate.com/decoderplus.

 

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A New Year’s Message from Willa

Decoder Ring listeners write in with some excellent mysteries, and for our last episode of the year we’re solving three of them. Why do children play in boxes full of sand? Why do rock bands pretend like the show is over when everybody knows they’re coming back for an encore? And what was up with those school assemblies where you’d get to skip class to learn about…yo-yos?

The voices you’ll hear in this episode include yo-yo masters ”Dazzling Dave” Schulte and Dale Oliver, children’s book author Rob Peñas, Pulitzer Prize-winning design critic Alexandra Lange, and music journalists Brian Wise, Michael Walker, and Travis Andrews. 

You can find all the music from the segment about encores in this YouTube playlist.

This episode was produced by Max Freedman, Katie Shepherd, and Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. We had additional production from Joel Meyer.

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.

 

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Mailbag: Yo-Yos, Sandboxes, and Encores

Americans are currently besotted with protein. It’s touted as being good for muscle growth, weight loss, skincare, mental acuity, longevity, and much else besides. It’s sold to men, women, children, the elderly— you can even buy protein for your pets. The protein supplement market alone is worth $21 billion and growing—and extra protein is being added to coffee, cereal, pasta, beer, ice cream, and popcorn.

But as frenzied as we currently are about protein, this is not the first protein boom—or even the second. Protein has been promoted as a charismatic, cure-all nutrient for nearly two centuries. In this episode, with the help of Samantha King and Gavin Weedon, the authors of Protein: The Making of a Nutritional Superstar, we look closely at all our protein crazes and their associated protein products—from beef tea to whey powder—and see what they can tell us about our current protein mania. 

This episode was produced by Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is also produced by Willa Paskin, Katie Shepherd, and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. We had editing support from Josh Levin and fact-checking by Sophie Summergrad. 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

King, Samantha and Gavin Weedon. Protein: The Making of a Nutritional Superstar, Duke University Press, 2026.

Baker, Ryan. “Protein has become America's latest obsession. Companies like General Mills and PepsiCo are capitalizing on it,” CNBC, July 22, 2025.

Brock, William H. Justus von Liebig: The Chemical Gatekeeper, Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Callahan, Alice. “The More Protein, the Better?” New York Times, April 9, 2025.

Draper, Kevin. “America’s Protein Obsession Is Transforming the Dairy Industry,” New York Times, July 16, 2025.

Gayomali, Chris. “Big Food Gets Jacked: How protein mania took over the American grocery store,” New York Magazine, Feb. 12, 2025.

“The Great Protein Fiasco,” Maintenance Phase, Aug. 31, 2021.

Liebig, Justus von. Researches on the Chemistry of Food, Taylor and Walton, 1847.

McLaren, Donald S. “The Great Protein Fiasco,” The Lancet, 1974.

Oncken, John. “Stingy, 'half-way' dairy farmer's curiosity changed the world,” Wisconsin State Farmer, April 27, 2022.

“Subject of Whey Disposal Discussed in UW Bulletin.” Wausau Daily Herald, Aug. 28, 1965.

Torrella, Kenny. “You’re probably eating way too much protein,” Vox, Jan. 30, 2024.

Wilson, Bee. “Protein mania: the rich world’s new diet obsession,” The Guardian, Jan. 4, 2019.

Wu, Katherine J. “Should We All Be Eating Like The Rock?” The Atlantic, Aug. 28, 2023.

 

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How Protein Muscled Its Way to the Top

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.

Brett Johnson was a career criminal: a fraudster, a con man, a cyber criminal, but now he’s a legal person operating on the right side of the law, helping companies stop people like he used to be. His story is the stuff of a movie like Catch Me iI You Can, it involves wild scams, narrow escapes, redemption, and even a trip to Disney World. Throughout his criminal career he defrauded people on the street, on eBay, on criminal web forums, within the justice system, and even inside the United States Secret Service. There’s great entertainment value in Brett’s story, but there’s also a great deal of complication to it, too. Real life isn’t as neat and tidy as a movie, and the ending is yet to be written. 

Today we explore Brett’s story, first by letting you enjoy it, and then we deconstruct it, to decide if we should. 

 

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