The Fame That Got Away
Today on Decoder Ring: Three stories about fame, and one about monkeys. Are primates susceptible to celebrity endorsements? What does fame do to the mind of a famous person? Who were the famous tattoo...
14 Dec 202137min
Truly Tasteless Jokes
Note: This episode is about offensive material, and so contains explicit and offensive language.Truly Tasteless Jokes were a series of joke books that dominated the bestsellers list during the 1980s. ...
7 Dec 202143min
The Philosophy of Vampires
In literature, the choice to become a vampire is a metaphor for transformative experiences. On this episode, we bring you a story from Slate's Hi-Phi Nation podcast, which explores problems in contemp...
30 Nov 202131min
You Just Lost The Game
When you think about the game, you lose the game. When you lose the game you must declare that you have lost the game, causing all others in your vicinity to also lose the game. That’s it, that’s the ...
23 Nov 202121min
The Alberta Rat War
Rats live wherever people live, with one exception: the Canadian province of Alberta. A rat sighting in Alberta is a major local event that mobilizes the local government to identify and eliminate any...
16 Nov 202137min
The Great Helga Hype
In the summer of 1986, both Time Magazine and Newsweek ran blockbuster cover stories on the same subject: a secret cache of provocative, intimate paintings by Andrew Wyeth, one of America's most famou...
9 Nov 202149min
Selling Out
In 2001, Oprah Winfrey invited Jonathan Franzen to come on her show to discuss his new novel The Corrections. A month later she withdrew the invitation, kicking off a media firestorm. The Oprah-Franze...
6 Aug 202146min
Tattoo Flash
Time does funny thing to everything, but especially to tattoos. Today, four stories about tattoos whose meanings have shifted with the passage of years, decades, or centuries: first, a look into an ar...
27 Juli 202146min
