Slow Burn
Decoder Ring | 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, becom...
Decoder Ring | 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 natu...
Decoder Ring | 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 o...
Decoder Ring | The Laff Box (Encore)
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...
Decoder Ring | The Glaring Problem with Headlights
Something seems to have happened to car headlights. In the last few years, many people have become convinced that they are much brighter than they use...
Decoder Ring | Off-the-Wall Stories of Off-Label Use
Products often tell you exactly how they’re intended to be used. But why leave it at that? As a culture, we have long had a knack for finding ingeniou...
Decoder Ring | How “Chicken Soup” Sold Its Soul
Chicken Soup for the Soul was the brainchild of two motivational speakers who preach the New Thought belief system known as the Law of Attraction. For...
Decoder Ring | Spring Break Forever
The infamous annual ritual of spring break—where thousands of college students head to the same warm location and go crazy—can seem like it’s always b...
Decoder Ring | How Books About Things That Changed the World… Changed the World
Look in the nonfiction section of any bookstore and you’ll find dozens of history books making the same bold claim: that their narrow, unexpected subj...
Supercommunicators | 3. How to Have the Hardest Conversations
The final installment of our series explores the conversations that most of us dread, like frank discussions of our differences or a negative performa...