Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work.How did the humble rubber duck become an icon of bath time? On this episode of Decoder Ring we tal
We’ve long been fascinated by the mysteries of reproduction. But that curiosity is piqued most intensely when something unexpected happens. The study of such “monstrous births,” as scientists once called them, propelled forward our understandin
Stamps, coins, sea shells, wine - the list of things that humans collect is endless. But why do people do it? What does a collection of inanimate objects bring to our lives that other things do not? Are people attracted by the thrill of the cha
How did Beanie Babies go from boom to bust?On this episode of History of the 90s, Host Kathy Kenzora looks back at the cute, colorful bean bag animals that started off as a toy but soon became an obsession for collectors who were buying and se
In this episode Sam meets Phil Sklar, co-founder and CEO of the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum. They chat about how Phil got into collecting bobbleheads, the history of bobbleheads, working with charities, having over 11,000 unique
In the new season of Working, host Jordan Weissmann is going inside New York City’s storied Museum of Modern Art to meet the people who keep one of the world’s great artistic institutions running. Paul Galloway is MoMA’s collection specialist f
In the 1970s, Frank Nesmith and Claudia Sailor created the Kindred Spirit Mailbox, a special spot amidst the dunes of the North Carolina coast where visitors leave messages expressing their joys, sorrows, and everything in between. Annie Breth
Alan Lomax believed that the culture of poor Americans was important and worthy of saving. So he spent decades traveling the American South and recording obscure musicians on their front porches, in churches, even in prisons. Today, he's consid
In 1985, Gert McMullin was one of the first San Franciscans to put a stitch on the AIDS Quilt, the quilt that began with one memorial square in honor of a man who had died of AIDS, and that now holds some 95,000 names. Gert never planned it thi
Aftab Hossain (Twitter: @iamDCinvestor) is a strategic advisor and private investor to projects in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space, with special focus on decentralized finance ("DeFi"). He specializes in technologies related to the Ethe