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    Slow Burn

    Slow Burn illuminates America’s most consequential moments, making sense of the past to better understand the present. Through archival tape and first-person interviews, the series uncovers the surprising events and little-known characters lurking within the biggest stories of our time.

    Join Slate Plus to unlock full, ad-free access to Slow Burn and your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe from the Slow Burn show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or visit slate.com/slowburnplus to get access wherever you listen.

    Season 11: Becoming Justice Gorsuch

    How Neil Gorsuch laid the foundation for a SCOTUS supermajority and then became its most unexpected wild card.

    Season 10: The Rise of Fox News

    How a cable news channel became a cultural and political force—and how a whole bunch of people rose up to try and stop it.

    Season 9: Gays Against Briggs

    A nationwide moral panic, a California legislator who rode the anti-gay wave, and the LGBTQ+ people who stepped up and came out to try and stop him.

    Season 8: Becoming Justice Thomas

    Where Clarence Thomas came from, how he rose to power, and how he’s brought the rest of us along with him, whether we like it or not. Winner of the Podcast of the Year at the 2024 Ambies Awards.

    Season 7: Roe v. Wade

    The women who fought for legal abortion, the activists who pushed back, and the justices who thought they could solve the issue for good. Winner of Apple Podcasts Show of the Year in 2022.

    Season 6: The L.A. Riots

    How decades of police brutality, a broken justice system, and a video tape set off six days of unrest in Los Angeles.

    Season 5: The Road to the Iraq War

    Eighteen months after 9/11, the United States invaded a country that had nothing to do with the attacks. Who’s to blame? And was there any way to stop it?

    Season 4: David Duke

    America’s most famous white supremacist came within a runoff of controlling Louisiana. How did David Duke rise to power? And what did it take to stop him?

    Season 3: Biggie and Tupac

    How is it that two of the most famous performers in the world were murdered within a year of each other—and their killings were never solved?

    Season 2: The Clinton Impeachment

    A reexamination of the scandals that nearly destroyed the 42nd president and forever changed the life of a former White House intern.

    Season 1: Watergate

    What did it feel like to live through the scandal that brought down President Nixon?

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

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    Copyright: © 2017 The Slate Group

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    Latest Episodes:
    Decoder Ring | What the Cuck?! Oct 08, 2025
    Show notes

    Earlier this year, a tweet went out from the official account of the Democratic Party, tagging the Trump advisor Stephen Miller. It was an image of what appeared to be a simple hotel room chair. But for those in the know, it was much more than that: It was a “cuck chair,” an online meme straight out of a popular genre of hardcore pornography in which a man watches his partner have sex with another man.

    How did we get to a place where the Democrats could flame a political opponent with an image out of cucking porn and have millions of people immediately understand it? In this episode we trace the complicated and intricate history of the cuck. It’s a history that includes everything from Jacobean dramas to World War II pilots to, yes, pornography, as well as a host of deeply American prejudices that have become a lot less submerged over the last 10 years. And we also situate the cuck within a larger context, one in which porn is the elephant in the room of American culture. It’s a potent force, shaping and reflecting our very wants and desires and it is constantly seeping into mainstream culture—and yet we don’t analyze, critique, or even talk about it very much because, well, it’s porn.

    In this NSFW episode, you’ll hear from: Slate staff writer Luke Winkie who wrote about the tweet that kicked this episode off; Samantha Cole, one of co-founders of 404 Media and the author of How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex;  Jennifer Panek, professor of English at the University of Ottawa; sex therapist and clinical psychologist Dr. David S. Ley; Dr. Justin Lehmiller, social psychologist, senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute, and podcast host; Mireille Miller-Young, associate professor of feminist studies at UC Santa Barbara and the author of A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography, and New York Magazine tech columnist John Herrman.

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

    We’d also like to thank Gabriel Roth, Talia Lavin, Tatum Hunter, Rebecca Fasman, Jessica Stoya, Aiden Starr, Perrin Swanmoore, Sophie Gilbert, and Kevin Heffernan, who was a fount of knowledge.

    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.

    Decoder Ring | Why Do Actors Act Like They Can Sing? Sep 24, 2025
    Show notes

    When an actor opens their mouth to sing in a movie, chances are high that the voice you hear will be their own. Even in music biopics, movie stars without much singing experience regularly go to great lengths to impersonate the most beloved vocalists of our time. Why not simply play Johnny Cash or Bruce Springsteen’s actual recordings, the reasons why we care about them in the first place? When the world is full of beautiful singing voices, why force Pierce Brosnan to bray his way through Mamma Mia?

    What you hear when an actor unhinges their jaw is a matter that Hollywood has been negotiating since the dawn of sound. So in this episode, we’ll learn about the “ghost singers” of classic Hollywood musicals, find out why they went extinct, and why today’s music biopics so often fudge the music. Then we leave Hollywood for Bollywood, where the rise of the celebrity “playback singer” shows what can happen when good singing is the highest priority.

    In this episode, you’ll hear from Slate’s pop music critic Jack Hamilton; musicologist Dominic Broomfield-McHugh, editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Hollywood Musical; Stephen Cole, co-author of a memoir by the ghost singer Marni Nixon; Isaac Butler, longtime Slate contributor and scholar of American acting; and Nasreen Munni Kabir, who has written several books on Hindi cinema and curates Indian films for the UK’s Channel 4.

    If you want to listen to any of the songs you heard in this episode in full, you can find them all on this Spotify playlist.

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

    Sources for This Episode

    Basinger, Jeanine. The Movie Musical! Alfred A. Knopf, 2019.

    Beaster-Jones, Jayson. Bollywood Sounds: The Cosmopolitan Mediations of Hindi Film Song, Oxford University Press, 2015.

    Butler, Isaac. The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act, Bloomsbury, 2022.

    Hamilton, Jack. “The Problem With Music Biopics Is Bigger Than Just the Cliches,” Slate, May 17, 2024.

    Kabir, Nasreen Munni. Lata Mangeshkar ...in Her Own Voice, Niyogi Books, 2009.

    Nixon, Marni with Stephen Cole. I Could Have Sung All Night: My Story, Billboard Books, 2006.

    Robbins, Allison. “‘Experimentations by Our Sound Department’: Playback Stars in 1930s Hollywood.” Star Turns in Hollywood Musicals, edited by Chabrol Marguerite and Toulza Pierre-Olivier, Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre, 2017.

    Srivastava, Sanjay. “Voice, Gender and Space in Time of Five-Year Plans: The Idea of Lata Mangeshkar,” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 39, no. 20, 2004.


    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.

    Decoder Ring | Jane Fonda’s Workout, Part 2: Hanoi Jane’s VHS Revolution (Encore) Sep 10, 2025
    Show notes

    In part two of our special two-part episode, we return to the 1982 VHS tape that created the at-home video industry: Jane Fonda’s Workout. On this episode, originally released in 2020, we deconstruct the tape itself, how it was made, and why anyone thought it was a good idea in the first place. Then we’ll explore how it was possible for an extremely polarizing political activist, despised by some for her activism during the Vietnam War, to become America’s premier exercise guru. It’s a story that involves one enterprising home video visionary, dozens of ridiculous celebrity workout tapes, Tricky Dick Nixon, and one very full life.

    Some of the voices you’ll hear on this episode include Jane Fonda; Court Shannon, former Karl Video employee; and Mary Hershberger, author of Jane Fonda’s War.

    This episode was written by Willa Paskin. It was edited and produced by Benjamin Frisch. We had research assistance from Cleo Levin. Decoder Ring is 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 the Decoder Ring hotline at 347-460-7281. We love to hear any and all of your ideas for the show.

    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.

    Decoder Ring | Jane Fonda’s Workout, Part 1: Jane and Leni (Encore) Aug 27, 2025
    Show notes

    In 1982, the Jane Fonda Workout became the best-selling home video of all time. Over decades, it and its 22 follow ups would spawn a fitness empire, sell more than 17 million copies, and transform Fonda into a leg-warmer-clad exercise guru. And 40 years after its initial release, when the COVID pandemic hit, the workout had a moment yet again. People began doing it alone and on Zoom, tweeting about it, writing about it. So when Jane Fonda agreed to talk to us, we set out to do an episode about it—but it did not go as planned.

    On Part 1 of a special two-part Decoder Ring, originally released in 2020, we explore the decades-long relationship of Jane Fonda and Leni Cazden, a fraught friendship that birthed the VHS workout that changed the world. It’s a story of creation, fame, forgiveness, trauma, betrayal, survival, politics, and exercise. You’ll hear from Jane Fonda and Leni Cazden, the brain behind the workout, and Shelly McKenzie, author of Getting Physical: The Rise of Fitness Culture in America.

    In two weeks we’ll return with Part 2: the nitty gritty story of the bestselling VHS tape of all time.

    This episode was written by Willa Paskin. It was edited and produced by Benjamin Frisch. We had research assistance from Cleo Levin. Decoder Ring is 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 the Decoder RIng hotline at 347-460-7281. We love to hear any and all of your ideas for the show.


    Sources for This Episode

    Burke, Carol. Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane, and the High-and-Tight, Beacon Press, 2005.

    Fonda, Jane. My Life So Far, Random House, 2005.

    Hershberger, Mary. Jane Fonda's War: A Political Biography of an Antiwar Icon, The New Press, 2005.

    Lembcke, Jerry. Hanoi Jane: War, Sex, and Fantasies of Betrayal, University of Massachusetts Press, 2010.

    McKenzie, Shelly. Getting Physical: The Rise of Fitness Culture in America, University Press of Kansas, 2013.

    Perlstein, Rick. Nixonland, Scribner, 2009.

    Rafferty, James Michael. “Politicising Stardom: Jane Fonda, IPC Films and Hollywood, 1977-1982,” Queen Mary University of London Dissertation, 2010.


    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.

    Decoder Ring | How to Hunt a Mammoth, and Other Experiments in Archaeology Aug 13, 2025
    Show notes

    Experimental archeology is, simply put, archeology that involves running experiments. Where traditional archaeologists may study, research, analyze, and theorize about how artifacts were made or used, experimental archaeologists actually try to recreate, test, and use them to see what they can learn. In doing so, they have given the field a whole new way to glean clues and get insights into the lives of our ancestors.

    Sam Kean is the author of a new book all about experimental archaeology called Dinner with King Tut. With help from him and a few archaeologists, we dig into a number of puzzles that experimental archaeology has helped solve—conundrums involving ancient megafauna, bizarre cookware, and deep sea voyages.

    In this episode, you’ll hear from archaeologists Susan Kaplan of Bowdoin College and Karen Harry of University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Native Hawaiian activist and storyteller Nāʻālehu Anthony.

    To learn more about the story of Hokule’a and its first navigator, Mau Piailug, watch Nāʻālehu Anthony’s 2010 documentary, Papa Mau: The Wayfinder, as well as The Navigators: Pathfinders of the Pacific.

    This episode was produced by Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is also produced by Willa Paskin and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. We had mixing help from Kevin Bendis.

    We’d also like to thank Metin Eren and Paul Benham.

    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.

    Decoder Ring | The Bad-Mouthing of British Teeth Jul 30, 2025
    Show notes

    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 DecoderRing@slate.com 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.

    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.

    Decoder Ring | Mailbag: Drug Names, Cow Abductions, and the “Ass-Intensifier” Jul 16, 2025
    Show notes

    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 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

    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.

    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.

    Decoder Ring | The White Noise Boom Jul 02, 2025
    Show notes

    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 Haygood, 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 DecoderRing@slate.com, 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.

    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.

    Decoder Ring | The Boston Cinematic Universe Jun 18, 2025
    Show notes

    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 DecoderRing@slate.com, 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.


    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.

    Decoder Ring | The Laff Box (Encore) Jun 04, 2025
    Show notes

    Decoder Ring is marking its 100th episode this year. To celebrate, we’re revisiting our very first episode from 2018, which asks: What happened to the laugh track? For nearly five decades, the laugh track was ubiquitous, but beginning in the early 2000s, it fell out of sitcom fashion. What happened? How did we get from The Beverly Hillbillies to 30 Rock? In this episode we meet the man who created the laugh track, which originated as a homemade piece of technology, and trace that technology’s fall and the rise of a more modern idea about humor. With the help of historians, laugh track obsessives, the showrunners of One Day at a Time and the director of Sports Night, this episode asks if the laugh track was about something bigger than laughter.

    You can read more in Willa’s article “The Man Who Perfected the Laugh Track” in Slate.

    Links and further reading on some of the things we discussed on the show:

    • Interview with Ben Glenn II on the history of the laugh track in McSweeney’s

    • See a Charlie Douglas Laff Box on Antiques Roadshow

    • More of Paul Iverson’s work restoring laugh tracks and inserting them into new shows

    • The sitcom One Day at a Time

    • Friends without a Laugh Track by Sboss

    • “The Okeh Laughing Record”

    • Tommy Schlamme and Aaron Sorkin’s Sports Night

    This episode was written by Willa Paskin. It was produced and edited by Benjamin Frisch, who also created the episode art. Decoder Ring is produced by Katie Shepherd, Max Freedman, and our supervising producer Evan Chung.

    If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com, or leave a message on the Decoder RIng hotline at 347-460-7281. We love to hear any and all of your ideas for the show.

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