Slow Burn

Earlier this year, a tweet went out from the official account of the Democratic Party, tagging the Trump advisor Stephen Miller. It was an image of what appeared to be a simple hotel room chair. But for those in the know, it was much more than that: It was a “cuck chair,” an online meme straight out of a popular genre of hardcore pornography in which a man watches his partner have sex with another man. How did we get to a place where the Democrats could flame a political opponent with an image out of cucking porn and have millions of people immediately understand it? In this episode we trace the complicated and intricate history of the cuck. It’s a history that includes everything from Jacobean dramas to World War II pilots to, yes, pornography, as well as a host of deeply American prejudices that have become a lot less submerged over the last 10 years. And we also situate the cuck within a larger context, one in which porn is the elephant in the room of American culture. It’s a potent force, shaping and reflecting our very wants and desires and it is constantly seeping into mainstream culture—and yet we don’t analyze, critique, or even talk about it very much because, well, it’s porn. In this NSFW episode, you’ll hear from: Slate staff writer Luke Winkie [https://slate.com/author/luke-winkie] who wrote about the tweet that kicked this episode off [https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/06/democrats-cuck-chair-joke-x-stephen-miller.html]; Samantha Cole [https://www.404media.co/author/samantha-cole/], one of co-founders of 404 Media [https://www.404media.co/] and the author of How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex [https://www.amazon.com/How-Sex-Changed-Internet-Unexpected-ebook/dp/B09TGQFXZM];  Jennifer Panek [https://wwnorton.co.uk/authors/544/Jennifer%20Panek], professor of English at the University of Ottawa; sex therapist and clinical psychologist Dr. David S. Ley [https://www.davidleyphd.com/]; Dr. Justin Lehmiller [https://www.sexandpsychology.com/], social psychologist, senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute, and podcast host [https://www.sexandpsychology.com/podcasts/]; Mireille Miller-Young [https://femst.ucsb.edu/people/mireille-miller-young], associate professor of feminist studies at UC Santa Barbara and the author of A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography [https://dukeupress.edu/a-taste-for-brown-sugar], and New York Magazine tech columnist John Herrman [https://nymag.com/author/john-herrman/].  This episode was written by Willa Paskin. It was edited by Josh Levin and produced by Katie Shepherd, Willa Paskin, Max Freedman, and Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director, and we had help from Sophie Summergrad. We’d also like to thank Gabriel Roth, Talia Lavin, Tatum Hunter, Rebecca Fasman, Jessica Stoya, Aiden Starr, Perrin Swanmoore, Sophie Gilbert, and Kevin Heffernan, who was a fount of knowledge.  If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com [DecoderRing@slate.com] or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281. Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoder-ring/id1376577202] or Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3vYNA0Ki5sUHnYC9QwQnKl]. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus [https://slate.com/podcast-plus?utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=plus_pod&utm_content=Decoder_Ring&utm_source=episode_summary] for access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

When an actor opens their mouth to sing in a movie, chances are high that the voice you hear will be their own. Even in music biopics, movie stars without much singing experience regularly go to great lengths to impersonate the most beloved vocalists of our time. Why not simply play Johnny Cash or Bruce Springsteen’s actual recordings, the reasons why we care about them in the first place? When the world is full of beautiful singing voices, why force Pierce Brosnan to bray his way through Mamma Mia? What you hear when an actor unhinges their jaw is a matter that Hollywood has been negotiating since the dawn of sound. So in this episode, we’ll learn about the “ghost singers” of classic Hollywood musicals, find out why they went extinct, and why today’s music biopics so often fudge the music. Then we leave Hollywood for Bollywood, where the rise of the celebrity “playback singer” shows what can happen when good singing is the highest priority. In this episode, you’ll hear from Slate’s pop music critic Jack Hamilton [https://slate.com/author/jack-hamilton]; musicologist Dominic Broomfield-McHugh, editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Hollywood Musical [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-the-hollywood-musical-9780197503423?cc=us&lang=en&]; Stephen Cole [https://www.stephencolewriter.org/], co-author of a memoir by the ghost singer Marni Nixon; Isaac Butler [https://slate.com/author/isaac-butler], longtime Slate contributor and scholar of American acting; and Nasreen Munni Kabir, who has written several books on Hindi cinema and curates Indian films for the UK’s Channel 4. If you want to listen to any of the songs you heard in this episode in full, you can find them all on this Spotify playlist [https://open.spotify.com/playlist/137rK0ywOBLcWlXUvK2MZ6?si=p0kR3YVGRm6WKwg8CTU5-Q]. This episode was written and produced by Max Freedman. It was edited by Willa Paskin and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.  If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com [DecoderRing@slate.com] or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281. Sources for This Episode Basinger, Jeanine. The Movie Musical! [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/243404/the-movie-musical-by-jeanine-basinger/] Alfred A. Knopf, 2019. Beaster-Jones, Jayson. Bollywood Sounds: The Cosmopolitan Mediations of Hindi Film Song [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/bollywood-sounds-9780199993468?cc=us&lang=en], Oxford University Press, 2015. Butler, Isaac. The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act [https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/method-9781635574784/], Bloomsbury, 2022. Hamilton, Jack. “The Problem With Music Biopics Is Bigger Than Just the Cliches [https://slate.com/culture/2024/05/amy-winehouse-back-to-black-movie-music-biopics-singing.html],” Slate, May 17, 2024.  Kabir, Nasreen Munni. Lata Mangeshkar ...in Her Own Voice [https://www.amazon.com/Lata-Mangeshkar-Her-Own-Voice/dp/8189738410], Niyogi Books, 2009. Nixon, Marni with Stephen Cole. I Could Have Sung All Night: My Story [https://www.amazon.com/-/he/Marni-Nixon/dp/0823099687], Billboard Books, 2006. Robbins, Allison. “‘Experimentations by Our Sound Department’: Playback Stars in 1930s Hollywood [https://books.openedition.org/pupo/30690?lang=en#anchor-persons].” Star Turns in Hollywood Musicals, edited by Chabrol Marguerite and Toulza Pierre-Olivier, Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre, 2017. Srivastava, Sanjay. “Voice, Gender and Space in Time of Five-Year Plans: The Idea of Lata Mangeshkar [http://www.jstor.org/stable/4415027],” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 39, no. 20, 2004. Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoder-ring/id1376577202] or Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3vYNA0Ki5sUHnYC9QwQnKl]. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus [https://slate.com/podcast-plus?utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=plus_pod&utm_content=Decoder_Ring&utm_source=episode_summary] for access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

In part two of our special two-part episode, we return to the 1982 VHS tape that created the at-home video industry: Jane Fonda’s Workout. On this episode, originally released in 2020, we deconstruct the tape itself, how it was made, and why anyone thought it was a good idea in the first place. Then we’ll explore how it was possible for an extremely polarizing political activist, despised by some for her activism during the Vietnam War, to become America’s premier exercise guru. It’s a story that involves one enterprising home video visionary, dozens of ridiculous celebrity workout tapes, Tricky Dick Nixon, and one very full life. Some of the voices you’ll hear on this episode include Jane Fonda [https://www.janefonda.com/]; Court Shannon, former Karl Video employee; and Mary Hershberger, author of Jane Fonda’s War [https://thenewpress.org/books/jane-fondas-war/?v=eb65bcceaa5f].  This episode was written by Willa Paskin. It was edited and produced by Benjamin Frisch. We had research assistance from Cleo Levin. Decoder Ring is produced by Katie Shepherd, Max Freedman, and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com [DecoderRing@slate.com], or leave a message on the Decoder Ring hotline at 347-460-7281. We love to hear any and all of your ideas for the show.  Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoder-ring/id1376577202] or Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3vYNA0Ki5sUHnYC9QwQnKl]. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus [https://slate.com/podcast-plus?utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=plus_pod&utm_content=Decoder_Ring&utm_source=episode_summary] for access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

In 1982, the Jane Fonda Workout became the best-selling home video of all time. Over decades, it and its 22 follow ups would spawn a fitness empire, sell more than 17 million copies, and transform Fonda into a leg-warmer-clad exercise guru. And 40 years after its initial release, when the COVID pandemic hit, the workout had a moment yet again. People began doing it alone and on Zoom, tweeting about it, writing about it. So when Jane Fonda agreed to talk to us, we set out to do an episode about it—but it did not go as planned. On Part 1 of a special two-part Decoder Ring, originally released in 2020, we explore the decades-long relationship of Jane Fonda [https://www.janefonda.com/]and Leni Cazden, a fraught friendship that birthed the VHS workout that changed the world. It’s a story of creation, fame, forgiveness, trauma, betrayal, survival, politics, and exercise. You’ll hear from Jane Fonda and Leni Cazden, the brain behind the workout, and Shelly McKenzie, author of Getting Physical: The Rise of Fitness Culture in America. [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0700623043/?tag=slatmaga-20] In two weeks we’ll return with Part 2: the nitty gritty story of the bestselling VHS tape of all time. This episode was written by Willa Paskin. It was edited and produced by Benjamin Frisch. We had research assistance from Cleo Levin. Decoder Ring is produced by Katie Shepherd, Max Freedman, and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com [DecoderRing@slate.com], or leave a message on the Decoder RIng hotline at 347-460-7281. We love to hear any and all of your ideas for the show.  Sources for This Episode Burke, Carol. Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane, and the High-and-Tight [https://www.beacon.org/Camp-All-American-Hanoi-Jane-and-the-High-and-Tight-P527.aspx], Beacon Press, 2005. Fonda, Jane. My Life So Far [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0812975766/], Random House, 2005. Hershberger, Mary. Jane Fonda's War: A Political Biography of an Antiwar Icon [https://thenewpress.org/books/jane-fondas-war/?v=eb65bcceaa5f], The New Press, 2005. Lembcke, Jerry. Hanoi Jane: War, Sex, and Fantasies of Betrayal [https://www.umasspress.com/9781558498150/hanoi-jane/], University of Massachusetts Press, 2010. McKenzie, Shelly. Getting Physical: The Rise of Fitness Culture in America [https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Physical-Fitness-Culture-America/dp/0700623043], University Press of Kansas, 2013. Perlstein, Rick. Nixonland [https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Nixonland/Rick-Perlstein/9780743243032], Scribner, 2009. Rafferty, James Michael. “Politicising Stardom: Jane Fonda, IPC Films and Hollywood, 1977-1982 [https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/675],” Queen Mary University of London Dissertation, 2010. Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoder-ring/id1376577202] or Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3vYNA0Ki5sUHnYC9QwQnKl]. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus [https://slate.com/podcast-plus?utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=plus_pod&utm_content=Decoder_Ring&utm_source=episode_summary] for access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Experimental archeology is, simply put, archeology that involves running experiments. Where traditional archaeologists may study, research, analyze, and theorize about how artifacts were made or used, experimental archaeologists actually try to recreate, test, and use them to see what they can learn. In doing so, they have given the field a whole new way to glean clues and get insights into the lives of our ancestors. Sam Kean [https://samkean.com/] is the author of a new book all about experimental archaeology called Dinner with King Tut [https://samkean.com/books/dinner-with-king-tut/]. With help from him and a few archaeologists, we dig into a number of puzzles that experimental archaeology has helped solve—conundrums involving ancient megafauna, bizarre cookware, and deep sea voyages. In this episode, you’ll hear from archaeologists Susan Kaplan [https://www.bowdoin.edu/profiles/faculty/skaplan/index.html] of Bowdoin College and Karen Harry [https://www.unlv.edu/people/karen-harry] of University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Native Hawaiian activist and storyteller Nāʻālehu Anthony [https://www.naalehuanthony.com/]. To learn more about the story of Hokule’a and its first navigator, Mau Piailug, watch Nāʻālehu Anthony’s 2010 documentary, Papa Mau: The Wayfinder [https://oiwi.tv/papa-mau-the-wayfinder/], as well as The Navigators: Pathfinders of the Pacific [https://naturedocumentaries.org/14031/master-navigators-pacific/]. This episode was produced by Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is also produced by Willa Paskin and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. We had mixing help from Kevin Bendis. We’d also like to thank Metin Eren and Paul Benham. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com [DecoderRing@slate.com] or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281. Get more of Decoder Ring with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of Decoder Ring and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoder-ring/id1376577202] or Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3vYNA0Ki5sUHnYC9QwQnKl]. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus [https://slate.com/podcast-plus?utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=plus_pod&utm_content=Decoder_Ring&utm_source=episode_summary] for access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]