Slate Culture Feed

On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by creator Annie Rauwerda, who runs the popular @depthsofwikipedia account, to talk about 25 years of Wikipedia and the platform’s recent decision to ban AI. While Wikipedia has long been seen as an infinite well of knowledge, it’s kept alive by hundreds of thousands of dedicated human volunteers. From the teenager who’d drive to historical sites to find official sources to the persnickety editor whose only activity is deleting the phrase “comprised of” from entries, the humans of Wikipedia are what make the depths of Wikipedia so special.

This podcast is produced by Vic Whitley-Berry, Daisy Rosario, and Kate Lindsay.
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Donna Summer was a hit-maker for two decades and a dance floor deity for more than three. Her collaborations with Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte were formative in dance, electronic, and rock music, influencing everyone from David Bowie and Blondie to Madonna and Moby. But the rock establishment was stinting in its appreciation—whether at Comiskey Park in Chicago in 1979 or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the 2000s.

In this encore episode from 2017, Chris Molanphy examines how Summer became the queen of disco … and then transcended that role altogether.

Get more Hit Parade with Slate Plus! Join for monthly early-access episodes, bonus episodes of "The Bridge," and ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe directly from the Hit Parade show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/hitparadeplus to get access wherever you listen.
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What’s the worst thing Steve, Dana, and Julia have ever done? And would you still love them if you knew the answer to that question? That’s not a subject for today’s episode, but these three do get into The Drama, the dark, polarizing rom-com directed by Kristoffer Borgli starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson which is animated by such disquieting inquiries.

Next, it’s time for elk meat, Montana golden hour, and feckless city slickers as our hosts take on Taylor Sheridan’s latest The Madison. Starring Michelle Pfeiffer, our hosts agree it’s an effective Western soap opera but is its Red State agitprop worth the price of admission?

Finally… there’s good boy. With their curly mop tops and wet eyes, doodle dog hybrids have nuzzled their way into Americans’ hearts. What does that say about us? The hosts discuss these questions and more raised in a recent New Yorker piece by John Seabrook, How Doodles Became the Dog du Jour.

In a bonus episode for Slate Plus subscribers, they have a spoiler-rich conversation divulging all of The Drama’s dirty secrets.

Endorsements
Dana: The latest from children's book author (and Dana's partner) Rowboat Watkins, Mousestache, Mooosestache about a riotous world overrun with mustaches.

Julia: The memoir The Wanderers by immigration journalist Daniela Gerson detailing her unlikely family history.

Steve: Book three of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay and the work of singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith, including his cover of Bob Dylan's "Tight Connection to My Heart" and his self-titled debut album.

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Email us your thoughts at [email protected].

Podcast production by Benjamin Frisch. Production assistance by Daniel Hirsch.
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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 [email protected] 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.

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On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by Slate contributing writer Imogen West-Knights to talk about Shy Girl, the controversial novel whose U.S. publication was cancelled over suspected AI use. The incident reveals just how unprepared the publishing industry is to confront the rise of AI-generated material, but also how AI is secretly already being used in many creative industries—whether anyone likes it or not.

This podcast is produced by Vic Whitley-Berry, Daisy Rosario, and Kate Lindsay.
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