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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

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.

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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

Hark, the holiday season is upon us—and with it the most solemn of festive traditions: a gift guide! In this video and podcast special, Slate hosts Dana Stevens, Chris Molanphy, and Willa Paskin beam-in from their collective hearths to deliver unto the internet their favorite gifts for culture lovers this holiday. In addition to sharing gifts, they also discuss the cultural artifact that is the “holiday gift guide,” and its history going back to the early 20th century, up to the modern day. See the entirety of the 1910 gift guide Our Special Holiday Gift-Book from Greenhut-Siegel Cooper, and Esquire’s ultra-mod gift guide from 1961.

Check out our gift recommendations below:

Dana Stevens’ Cozy Movie Night-In: 

 
The Salbree Collapsible Silicone Microwave Popcorn Popper & Amish Country Popcorn
 
L'agraty Chunky Knit Blanket Throw
 
The Adventures of Antoine Doinel, The Criterion Collection Box Set

Chris Molanphy’s Hit Parade Collection: 

 
The Beatles’ Revolver CD Box Set
 
Mad Men Blu-Ray Box Set 
 
Can't Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop's Blockbuster Year, by Michaelangelo Matos

Willa Paskin’s Fruit-Themed Trompe-l'œil Housewares:

 
Cantaloupe-shaped bowls in the style of Bordallo Pinheiro
 
4-Pack Orange-Shaped Candle Stocking Stuffer
 
Cherry-Shaped Toilet Brush

The Slate Culture Gift Guide is produced for Slate Studios by Benjamin Frisch and Micah Phillips, with Meryl Bezrutczyk and Andrew Harding.

 

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The Slate Culture Gift Guide

Autumn may have more cozy signifiers than any other season—though we all have our own favorites. Maybe for you it’s sweater weather, football games, spooky season, apple picking, leaf peeping, or mainlining candy corn. Whatever it is, in today’s episode we’re looking closely at three of these autumnal staples.

First, we get to the bottom of a recurring complaint about the taste of the pumpkin spice latte. Then we gaze deep inside the enigma hiding inside colorful fall leaves. Finally we ask some hard-hitting questions about the seasonal availability of an elusive cookie. Snuggle up and enjoy!

In this episode, you’ll hear from author and podcaster Don Martin who has a new audiobook out about loneliness called Where Did Everybody Go?. We also speak with Simcha Lev-Yadun, professor of botany and archeology; Susanne Renner, botanist and honorary professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis; and Prospect Park Alliance arborist Malcolm Gore. And you’ll also hear from Lauren Tarr, who runs the blog Midlife Moxie and Muscle, and her mother Grace Dewey, along with Caroline Suppiger, brand manager at Mondelēz.

We’d also like to thank Brian Gallagher, Tom Arnold, Sylvie Russo and Laura Robinson.

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

 

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Cozy Autumn Mysteries

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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The Grifter

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