Decoder Ring Slate Podcasts
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- Maatschappij en cultuur
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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.
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Why Are We Still Using Fat Suits?
A fat suit is a custom-made costume with one goal: to make an actor appear fat without them actually having to be fat. It’s typically a unitard filled with mattress foam and other wiggly, jiggly bits—but it’s also so much more than that, an embodiment of all our cultural hang-ups about fatness. In today’s episode we’re going to consider the fat suit from all angles: how it’s made, how it’s changed, and why it continues to exist.
You’ll hear from Dawn Dininger, Royce Best, Amy Farrell, Hazel Cills, Mia Mask, and Matthew Mungle.
This episode was written and produced by Katie Shepherd. It was edited by Willa Paskin. Decoder Ring is also produced by Evan Chung and Max Freedman. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. We had mixing help from Kevin Bendis.
Special thank you to: Mike Marino, Jacqui Lucey, Gina Tonic, Kate Young, Barbara Miller and The Museum of the Moving Image.
If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.
If you’re a fan of the show, please sign up for Slate Plus. Members get to listen to Decoder Ring and all other Slate podcasts without any ads and have total access to Slate’s website. Your support is also crucial to our work. Go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Why Are We Still Using Fat Suits?
A fat suit is a custom-made costume with one goal: to make an actor appear fat without them actually having to be fat. It’s typically a unitard filled with mattress foam and other wiggly, jiggly bits—but it’s also so much more than that, an embodiment of all our cultural hang-ups about fatness. In today’s episode we’re going to consider the fat suit from all angles: how it’s made, how it’s changed, and why it continues to exist.
You’ll hear from Dawn Dininger, Royce Best, Amy Farrell, Hazel Cills, Mia Mask, and Matthew Mungle.
This episode was written and produced by Katie Shepherd. It was edited by Willa Paskin. Decoder Ring is also produced by Evan Chung and Max Freedman. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. We had mixing help from Kevin Bendis.
Special thank you to: Mike Marino, Jacqui Lucey, Gina Tonic, Kate Young, Barbara Miller and The Museum of the Moving Image.
If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.
If you’re a fan of the show, please sign up for Slate Plus. Members get to listen to Decoder Ring and all other Slate podcasts without any ads and have total access to Slate’s website. Your support is also crucial to our work. Go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today. -
How the Jalapeño Lost Its Heat
The jalapeño is the workhorse of hot peppers. They’re sold fresh, canned, pickled, in hot sauces, salsas, smoked into chipotles, and they outsell all other hot peppers in the United States. These everyday chilies are a scientific and sociological marvel, and tell a complicated story about Mexican food and American palates.
In today’s episode, we meet Dallas-based food critic Brian Reinhart, who fell in love with spicy Mexican cuisine as a teenager. Recently, Brian started to notice that the jalapeños he’d buy in the grocery store were less and less hot. So he called up an expert: Dr. Stephanie Walker, who studies chili pepper genetics at New Mexico State University. She explains that the food industry has been breeding milder jalapeños for decades – a project led by “Dr. Pepper” himself, Benigno Villalon.
Finally, Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano puts the jalapeño in context, as part of an age-old cycle in Americans’ obsession with Mexican food: one more ingredient that’s been “discovered,” celebrated, then domesticated.
Brian Reinhart’s article about the jalapeño ran in D Magazine. Gustavo Arellano’s book is called Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.
This episode was produced by Evan Chung, who produces the show with Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.
If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.
If you’re a fan of the show, please sign up for Slate Plus. Members get to listen to Decoder Ring and all other Slate podcasts without any ads and have total access to Slate’s website. Your support is also crucial to our work. Go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
How the Jalapeño Lost Its Heat
The jalapeño is the workhorse of hot peppers. They’re sold fresh, canned, pickled, in hot sauces, salsas, smoked into chipotles, and they outsell all other hot peppers in the United States. These everyday chilies are a scientific and sociological marvel, and tell a complicated story about Mexican food and American palates.
In today’s episode, we meet Dallas-based food critic Brian Reinhart, who fell in love with spicy Mexican cuisine as a teenager. Recently, Brian started to notice that the jalapeños he’d buy in the grocery store were less and less hot. So he called up an expert: Dr. Stephanie Walker, who studies chili pepper genetics at New Mexico State University. She explains that the food industry has been breeding milder jalapeños for decades – a project led by “Dr. Pepper” himself, Benigno Villalon.
Finally, Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano puts the jalapeño in context, as part of an age-old cycle in Americans’ obsession with Mexican food: one more ingredient that’s been “discovered,” celebrated, then domesticated.
Brian Reinhart’s article about the jalapeño ran in D Magazine. Gustavo Arellano’s book is called Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.
This episode was produced by Evan Chung, who produces the show with Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.
If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.
If you’re a fan of the show, please sign up for Slate Plus. Members get to listen to Decoder Ring and all other Slate podcasts without any ads and have total access to Slate’s website. Your support is also crucial to our work. Go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today. -
From ‘The Last Archive’: Building an Automatic Songwriting Machine
We’re bringing you an episode of The Last Archive from our friends at Pushkin Industries. In this episode: an exploration of early artificial intelligence, the story of the composer Raymond Scott’s lifelong quest to build an automatic songwriting machine, and what it means for our own AI-addled, ChatGPT.
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Making Real Music for a Fake Band
Pop culture is full of fictional bands singing songs purpose-made to capture a moment, a sound. This music doesn’t organically emerge from a scene or genre, hoping to find an audience. Instead it fulfills an assignment: it needs to be 1960s folk music, 1970s guitar rock, 80s hair metal, 90s gangsta rap, and on and on.
In this episode, we’re going to use ‘Stereophonic,’ which just opened on Broadway, as a kind of case study in how to construct songs like this. The playwright David Adjmi and his collaborator, Will Butler formerly of the band Arcade Fire, will walk us through how they did it. How they made music that needs to capture the past, but wants to speak to the present; that has to work dramatically but hopes to stand on its own; that must be plausible, but aspires to be something even more.
The band in Stereophonic includes Sarah Pidgeon, Tom Pecinka, Juliana Canfield, Will Brill, and Chris Stack. Stereophonic is now playing on Broadway—and the cast album will be out May 10.
Thank you to Daniel Aukin, Marie Bshara, and Blake Zidell and Nate Sloan.
This episode was produced by Max Freedman and edited by Evan Chung, who produce the show with Katie Shepherd. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.
If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.
If you’re a fan of the show, please sign up for Slate Plus. Members get to listen to Decoder Ring and all other Slate podcasts without any ads and have total access to Slate’s website. Your support is also crucial to our work. Go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Customer Reviews
Almost an advertising podcast
While the podcast has moments of brilliance it has devolved into a podcast full of advertising with the show sprinkled in between. Not just advertising for external product but also lengthy advertising for other shows on the network. Many shows do that, but not to the tune decoder ring does