Decoder Ring

Oscar-winner Warren Beatty first secured the rights to the comic book character Dick Tracy in the lead up to his 1990 movie adaptation. Decades later, Beatty kept playing Tracy in bizarre late-night s...

25 Sep 202442min

Adults have a long history of trying to find morals and lessons in children’s literature. But what happens when a seemingly innocent book about a boy and a hungry mouse becomes fodder for the culture ...

11 Sep 202433min

In the late 1970s, a new and unusual concept for a restaurant chain emerged in California—video games plus bad pizza plus animatronic characters. The result was Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre, a...

28 Aug 202445min

“Hysteria” is an ancient word carrying thousands of years of baggage. Though the terminology has changed, hysteria has not gone away, and in its most baffling instances it can even be contagious. The ...

14 Aug 202433min

If you’re lucky, it’s possible you’ve never thought much about sitting. It’s just something your body does, like breathing or sleeping. But in the last decade or so, sitting has stepped into the spotl...

31 Juli 202435min

Lawn ornaments are everywhere—but for something so ubiquitous, they’re also mysterious. What’s the person with the flamingo or the gargoyle in their yard trying to say—and why do they want to say it s...

17 Juli 202444min

Axolotls. Narwhals. Llamas. Sloths. Every few years, it seems like American kids and parents collectively decide they cannot get enough of a creature that makes teddy bears seem impossibly quaint. In ...

3 Juli 202436min

30 years ago, the Stanley Cup playoffs ignited a rumor that has been messing with Jane Macdougall’s life ever since. In 1994, the Vancouver Canucks had made it all the way to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup...

19 Juni 202433min