The Artist Who Was Both Loved and Disdained

Earlier this year we debuted Decoder Rings Back, our new feature exclusively for Decoder Ring Plus subscribers. In each installment, Willa gets a listener on the phone and tries her best to answer their question about a cultural mystery. We have been having a blast making these e ...  Show more

Like the palm tree, the Everglades, Disney World, and the “Florida Man,” the orange is a classic symbol of the Sunshine State. But maybe not for much longer. Production has declined to catastrophic levels, a decrease of more than 95% in less than 25 years. It’s a produce murder m ...  Show more

From the moment it was released in 1995, The Rules was controversial.. Some people loved it—and swore that the dating manual’s throwback advice helped them land a husband. Others thought it was retrograde hogwash that flew in the face of decades of feminist progress. The resultin ...  Show more

In the mid-1990s, the prime time drama Melrose Place became a home to hundreds of pieces of contemporary art—and no one noticed. In this episode, Isaac Butler tells the story of the artist collective that smuggled subversive quilts, sperm-shaped pool floats, and dozens of other p ...  Show more

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 ...  Show more

This week, the panel begins by reviewing The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar, Wes Anderson’s faithful adaptation of a 1977 Roald Dahl short story, that doubles as a sumptuous meta-commentary on the director’s exacting approach to his craft. Then, the three discuss The Super Models ...  Show more