In 2001, Oprah Winfrey invited Jonathan Franzen to come on her show to discuss his new novel The Corrections. A... more

Time does funny thing to everything, but especially to tattoos. Today, four stories about tattoos whose meanings have shifted with... more

You know the Tootsie Shot. It’s that shot from the movies: a really busy midtown street, protagonist smack in the middle of it... more

In the year 2000, Dan Kois was a junior book agent working on selling a secretive book proposal called IT, a... more

Ilona Granet was a New York art-scene fixture who won the praise of the art world when she put up... more

If you love the show and want to support us, consider joining Slate Plus. With Slate Plus you can binge... more

To say that hydration is an invention is only a slight exaggeration. Back in the 1970’s and ‘80s, no one... more

Welcome to a brand new season of Decoder Ring! On this episode, we investigate the wild world of soap operas... more

Right now Decoder Ring is working on a full season of new episodes coming this June, but in the meantime... more

What took blue food so long to catch on? Today it’s all over the freezer aisle, in candies for kids,... more