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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 natural sounds like a rainstorm or crashing waves—tha…
Published on 4 months ago
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 on a Boston-based cultural mystery: namely, the “B…
Published on 4 months, 2 weeks ago
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 laugh track? For nearly five decades, the laugh …
Published on 5 months ago
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 used to be—and it’s driving them to the point of rag…
Published on 5 months, 2 weeks ago
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 ingenious, off-label uses for things. In this episode, we…
Published on 5 months, 4 weeks ago
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 more than 30 years, the self-help series has com…
Published on 6 months, 1 week ago
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 been here. But it hasn’t. The spring break phenome…
Published on 6 months, 3 weeks ago
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 subject somehow changed the world. Potatoes, kudzu, s…
Published on 7 months, 1 week ago
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 performance review at work. We often anticipate that thes…
Published on 7 months, 3 weeks ago
Decoder Ring | Truck Nutz (Encore)
Truck Nutz is a brand name for the dangling plastic testicles some people affix to the bumpers or hitches of their vehicles. Also sold as Bulls Balls, Your Nutz, and other brand names, these plastic …
Published on 7 months, 3 weeks ago