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Decoder Ring

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Decoder Ring
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  • The Bad-Mouthing of British Teeth
    From The Simpsons’ Big Book of British Smiles to Austin Powers’ ochre-tinged grin, American culture can’t stop bad-mouthing English teeth. But why? Are they worse than any other nation’s? June Thomas drills down into the origins of the stereotype, and discovers that the different approaches to dentistry on each side of the Atlantic have a lot to say about our national values. In this episode, you’ll hear from historians Mimi Goodall, Mathew Thomson, and Alyssa Picard, author of Making the American Mouth; and from professor of dental public health Richard Watt. This episode was written by June Thomas and edited and produced by Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. Our show is also produced by Willa Paskin, Katie Shepherd, and Max Freedman. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. 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 Goodall, Mimi. “Sugar in the British Atlantic World, 1650-1720,” DPhil dissertation, Oxford University, 2022. Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, Penguin Books, 1986. Picard, Alyssa. Making the American Mouth: Dentists and Public Health in the Twentieth Century, Rutgers University Press, 2009.  Thomson, Mathew. “Teeth and National Identity,” People’s History of the NHS. Trumble, Angus. A Brief History of the Smile, Basic Books, 2004. Wynbrandt, James. The Excruciating History of Dentistry: Toothsome Tales & Oral Oddities from Babylon to Braces, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000. Watt, Richard, et al. “Austin Powers bites back: a cross sectional comparison of US and English national oral health surveys,” BMJ, Dec. 16, 2015. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  • Mailbag: Drug Names, Cow Abductions, and the “Ass-Intensifier”
    In this episode we’re opening our mailbag to answer three fascinating questions from our listeners. How did “ass,” a word for donkeys and butts, become what linguists call an “intensifier” for just about everything? How do pharmaceuticals get their wacky names? And why do we all seem to think that aliens from outer space would travel to Earth just to kidnap our cows? In this episode, you’ll hear from linguistics professor Nicole Holliday, historians Greg Eghigian and Mike Goleman, and professional “namer” Laurel Sutton. This episode of Decoder Ring was produced by Willa Paskin, Max Freedman, and Katie Shepherd. Our supervising producer is Evan Chung. Merritt Jacob is Slate’s Technical Director.  If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at [email protected], 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 Bengston, Jonas. “Post-Intensifying: The Case of the Ass-Intensifier and Its Similar but Dissimilar Danish Counterpart,” Leviathan, 2021. Collier, Roger. “The art and science of naming drugs,” Canadian Medical Association Journal, Oct. 2014. Eghigian, Greg. After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon, Oxford University Press, 2024. Goleman, Michael J. “Wave of Mutilation: The Cattle Mutilation Phenomenon of the 1970s,” Agricultural History, 2011. Karet, Gail B. “How Do Drugs Get Named?” AMA Journal of Ethics, Aug. 2019. Miller, Wilson J. “Grammaticalizaton in English: A Diachronic and Synchronic Analysis of the "ass" Intensifier,” Master’s Thesis, San Francisco State University, 2017. Monroe, Rachel. “The Enduring Panic About Cow Mutilations,” The New Yorker, May 8, 2023. A Strange Harvest, dir. Linda Moulton Howe, KMGH-TV, 1980. “United States Adopted Names naming guidelines,” AMA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  • Introducing The Sporkful | Is Your Recipe Lying To You?
    If you look at any list of best-selling cookbooks, certain words come up over and over again: quick, easy, fast, effortless. But is it actually possible to deliver deliciousness in no time? Or are these recipes too good to be true? This week, The Sporkful talks with intrepid journalist Tom Scocca, who exposed the dirty secret about caramelized onions; recipe-writing legend Christopher Kimball; and food writer (and mom) Elizabeth Dunn, who’s sick of feeling bad when a recipe turns out to be harder than she expected. And we ask: Why do recipes that look simple on paper turn out to be very different once you get into the kitchen? Tom Scocca is the editor of Indiginity, and you can read his Slate story about caramelizing onions here. Christopher Kimball is the founder of Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street. Elizabeth Dunn co-writes the newsletter Consumed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  • The White Noise Boom
    White noise has a very precise technical definition, but people use the term loosely, to describe all sorts of washes of sound—synthetic hums, or natural sounds like a rainstorm or crashing waves—that can be used to mask other sounds. Twenty years ago, if you’d told someone white noise was a regular part of your life, they would have found that unusual. Nowadays, it’s likely they use it themselves or know someone who does. The global white noise business is valued at $1.3 billion; TikTok is full of people trumpeting its powers; and Spotify users alone listen to three million hours of it daily. Far more of these sounds already exist than any one person could need—or use. And yet, more keep coming.  Looking out at this uncanny ocean of seemingly indistinguishable noises, we wanted to see if it was possible to put a human face on it; to understand why there is so much of it, and what motivates the people trying to soothe our desperate ears with sounds you're not really supposed to hear. In this episode, you’ll hear from Elan Ullendorff, who writes the illuminating Substack Escape the Algorithm; Stéphane Pigeon, founder of myNoise; Brandon Reed, who runs Dwellspring; and Mack Hagood, author of Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control and host of the podcast Phantom Power. We’d also like to thank Dan Berlau, Sarah Anderson, and Ashley Carman.  This episode was written by Katie Shepherd, Evan Chung, and Willa Paskin. It was produced by Katie Shepherd. We produce Decoder Ring with Max Freedman, and Evan is also our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at [email protected], or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281. Sources for This Episode Anderson, Sarah. The Lost Art of Silence: Reconnecting to the Power and Beauty of Quiet, Shambhala Publications, 2023. Blum, Dani. “Can Brown Noise Turn Off Your Brain?” New York Times, Sep. 23, 2022. Carman, Ashley. “Spotify Looked to Ban White Noise Podcasts to Become More Profitable,” Bloomberg, Aug. 17, 2023.  Carman, Ashley. “Spotify to Cut Back Promotional Spending on White Noise Podcasts,” Bloomberg, Sep. 1, 2023. Hagood, Mack. Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control, Duke University Press, 2019. Pickens, Thomas A., Sara P. Khan, and Daniel J. Berlau. “White noise as a possible therapeutic option for children with ADHD,” Complementary Therapies in Medicine, Feb. 2019. Riva, Michele Augusto, Vincenzo Cimino, and Stefano Sanchirico. “Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s 17th century white noise machine,” The Lancet Neurology, Oct. 2017. Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  • The Boston Cinematic Universe
    This episode is a first for Decoder Ring: a live show, recorded at the WBUR Festival in Boston, Massachusetts. Given the setting, we decided to take on a Boston-based cultural mystery: namely, the “Boston movie.” Beginning in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Hollywood has churned out a whole cycle of films drenched in Beantown’s particularities, crimes, crops, class conflicts, and accents, from The Departed to The Town. Why does a city smaller than El Paso or Jacksonville loom so large in the cinematic imagination? Why does Boston have a movie subgenre all its own? What makes a Boston movie a Boston movie? With the help of three guests—film critic Ty Burr; Lisa Simmons, founder of the Roxbury International Film Festival; and Boston University linguist Danny Erker—we look closely at the history and heyday of the Boston movie: how The Friends of Eddie Coyle set the template, Good Will Hunting shoved the door wide open, and Mystic River ushered in an imperial phase. We discuss the importance of race and class to the Boston movie and the city itself, the role of homegrown movie stars like Ben Affleck and Mark Wahlberg, and, of course, the best and worst of Boston accents on film. This episode of Decoder Ring was produced by Willa Paskin and Max Freedman. Our team also includes Katie Shepherd and supervising producer Evan Chung. Merritt Jacob is Slate’s Technical Director.  If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at [email protected], or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281. Films referenced in this episode: The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) Love Story (1970) The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) The Brink’s Job (1978) The Verdict (1982) Quiz Show (1994) Good Will Hunting (1997) Squeeze (1997) Monument Ave. (1998) The Boondock Saints (1999) Southie (1999) Lift (2001) Blue Hill Avenue (2001) Mystic River (2003) Fever Pitch (2005) The Departed (2006) Gone Baby Gone (2007) The Fighter (2010) The Town (2010) Ted (2012) Ted 2 (2015) Black Mass (2015) Spotlight (2015) Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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About Decoder Ring

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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