"When I was working on Welcome To Your Fantasy, the Chippendales history podcast, this show was my North Star for how to contextualize culture in a historical moment — and it launched my personal obsession with archival materials. The team did an incredible job reporting, and pulled back just enough of the curtain on the process of its creation."

- Eleanor Kagan, Welcome To Your Fantasy/Julie: The Unwinding of the Miracle/Immaterial/This Is Dating/Another Round/Thirst Aid Kit/See Something Say Something/Ask Me Another

Decoder Ring is a sly, elegant excavation of pop culture ephemera, where host Willa Paskin treats fleeting trends and half-forgotten phenomena with the rigor of a cultural anthropologist and the flair of a raconteur. Each episode dissects a single cultural curiosity—be it the rise of the laugh track, the enduring mystery of “Baby Shark,” or the strange saga of the sexy lamp—with a tone that’s both amused and exacting.

What makes the show sing is its refusal to condescend; Paskin never treats pop as frivolous, but as revealing—signposts of our collective fears, tastes, and contradictions. The podcast moves with precision, weaving archival audio, interviews, and sharp narration into compact little essays that often sneak up on something profound.

Decoder Ring doesn’t explain culture so much as unspool it, teasing out the strange logic behind the things we consume and discard. It’s witty, curious, and endlessly re-listenable.