Monday, Feb 10, 2020 • 34min

Friend of Dorothy

Play Episode
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. When Peter Mac was young, he found solace from his troubles in the voice of Judy Garland. He's now been a Judy Garland impersonator for 17 years. On this episode of Decoder Ring we explore the special valence that Judy Garland has for queer people, the history of female impersonation on stage, and what the future might hold for Judy as an icon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Read more
Talking about
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Speakers
(7)
Benjamin Fresh
Peter Mac
Willa Paskin
Show more
Transcript
Verified
00:04
This podcast contains explicit language.
Share
Peter Mac
00:09
I remember the first time I saw it, I was just five years old, four and a half. And it was my birthday because I would always screen it in the springtime. And my at sat me down in front of the television set in our house in
Queens Village
, and it was like a religious experience. I was transfixed, and I fell in love with a little girl in the blue gingham dress.
Share
00:37
When I was 12, we were going on a family vacation, and we were in a place called Genevieve’s which today would be the equivalent of
Duane Reade
. And there was audio cassettes. There was one that said
Judy Garland
over the Rainbow. And I looked at the cassette and I said, well, she kind of looks like
Dorothy
, but she’s older. And I showed it to my mom, and she said, yeah, she did more than just
The Wizard Of Oz
.
Share
01:01
She made other movies. She played
Carnegie Hall
. She had a television series, and she made record albums. And I was like,
Dorothy
made records. How cool. So they bought me that cassette and I made my family listen to that tape all the way to Hershey, Pennsylvania, and all the way back to New York. They must have listened to it about 100 times.
Share
01:18
She managed to just. Get right into the deepest recesses of somebody’s soul. And she could tap into this sadness. But more importantly, the joy within someone. And I was miserable enough as an adolescent. So I never viewed Judy as a tragic figure. She represented this great sense of joy to me, and that’s what the voice represents.
Share
01:43
I got rhythm. I got music. I got my man, who could ask for anything more. I got daisies in green pastures. I've got my man, who could ask for anything more.
Share
Peter Mac
02:01
My name is Peter Mac, and I'm a
Judy Garland
tribute artist. I have been now for 17 years.
Share
Willa Paskin
02:09
This is Decoder Ring, a show about cracking cultural mysteries. I’m Willa Paskin. Every episode we take on a cultural question, habit or idea. Crack it open and try to figure out what it means and why it matters. Fifty years after her death,
Judy Garland
is still with us as the star of
The Wizard Of Oz
, among many other things. She’s part of our cultural education, passed down from generation to generation.
Share
02:38
Her combination of incredible talent and incredible frailty continues to make her fascinating. Just recently, she’s been the subject of a biopic starring
Renee Zellweger
and a documentary on
Showtime
, which she’s always been particularly fascinating to and beloved by a community that feels a particularly special connection to her queer people and gay men in particular.
Share
02:58
In this episode, Decoder Ring's producer Benjamin Fresh is going to explore this special relationship through the life and work of Peter Mac, the
Judy Garland
impersonator you’ve just heard from. We’re going to look at the history and future of
Judy Garland
, of celebrity impersonation and a female impersonation to try and figure out why Judy still resonates. So today, decoder ring. Who’s still in love with
Judy Garland
?
Share
03:34
One person that loves
Judy Garland
is, as I said, Decoder Ring's producer. Benjamin Fresh. Hi, Ben.
Share
Benjamin Fresh
03:40
Hey, Willa.
Share
Willa Paskin
03:41
So how did you get into
Judy Garland
?
Share
Benjamin Fresh
03:43
I think I saw
The Wizard of Oz
when I was really young. I don’t remember ever having seen it for the first time. It was just always a part of my world, I guess.
Share
03:51
I didn't really obsess over her as an adolescent, and I'm sort of embarrassed to admit that I knew almost nothing about her life for most of my life. But when a gay person references to
Judy Garland
, they just kind of pop up everywhere like the term
Friend Of
Dorothy
to meet a gay person.
Share
04:06
I think I first heard that in the movie,
Clueless
when I was a kid and I had no idea what it meant.
Share
04:10
What?
Share
04:11
He's a disco dancing, Oscar Wilde reading, Streisand ticket holding,
Friend Of
Dorothy
. You know what I'm saying?
Share
Benjamin Fresh
04:17
It's references like that that made me really want to dig in and learn more about
Judy Garland
.
Share
04:21
So I recently started listening to her music and watching her movies and I got really into her 1961 live album,
Judy At Carnegie Hall
, which is widely considered to be the high point of her singing career.
Share
04:40
I wanted to find out exactly why this woman was, and is, so spellbinding to people like me and to people like Peter Mac who you heard at the top of the show. He performs as
Judy Garland
every Saturday in New York City.
Share
05:06
Peter's show is one of the most wholesome things I've ever seen. Judy curses a little and needles the audience a bit. But it all feels sort of removed from time, from another era. The set list and style of the show changes every few weeks. But when I saw it was a cabaret of Judy classics from the
Broadway
songbook.
Share
05:22
He wore a black sequined gown, black Judy wig and makeup to block out his eyebrows in order to look a little bit more like Judy at first. It's a bit strange because, you know, it's a man wearing a dress in front of you.
Share
05:33
But when you see Peter actually start to sing and move around the stage, must up his wig and throw the microphone cord over his shoulder. You totally forget that he's not
Judy Garland
.
Share
05:56
What Peter is doing here. It might seem really, really niche. He's a male
Judy Garland
tribute artist, after all. But it's actually part of centuries old, mainstream tradition. In other words, it's not niche at all and to see that we need to go back to
Vaudeville
.
Share
06:13
Female impersonators have existed as long as theater has existed, originally because women weren't allowed to perform on stage. But even after that changed, female impersonation persisted as popular entertainment well into the 20th century.
Share
Joe E. Jeffreys
06:31
And
in Vaudeville
, female impersonation was just another one of the acts.
Share
Benjamin Fresh
06:35
Joe E. Jeffreys is a professor of theater studies at NYU. And the new school, with a focus on gender performance.
Share
Joe E. Jeffreys
06:41
Generally, these acts took the form of the impersonator coming out and telling perhaps a funny little story, singing a song or two, maybe doing a simple dance. And some of the acts at the end would take off the wig to reveal that indeed this was a man underneath this outfit. Because portions of the audience might not have known up until that point that that was a man up there on stage in front of them.
Share
Benjamin Fresh
07:10
Some of these performers became quite famous. Julian Elton was a
Vaudeville
star for decades, appeared in films, and was one of the highest paid stage actors of his era. Here he is on camera in 1929 dressed in a full showgirl, complete with a huge feather plumed headpiece and feather boas cascading off his dress.
Share
07:29
Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. Well, here I am back in Hollywood, making my first talking picture. I have had several ladies on the set and ladies around the different studios asked me this year as to who is making my costumes.
Share
07:42
Frank DeCaro
is a writer and the author of "Drag: Combing Through the Big Wigs of Show Business".
Share
Frank DeCaro
07:47
He was someone who was kind of the
RuPaul
of 1912. He was the hottest thing. He had a magazine. He was on Broadway. He was films. He had a Broadway theater named after him in 1912. I mean, when it’s still there, it’s a multiplex on Forty Second Street, but it’s there at this point. There wasn't a strong connection between
Homosexuality
and
Cross-dressing
on stage.
Share
Benjamin Fresh
08:14
What Elton was doing was thought of more like a magic trick than it was like gender performance. An impression he contributed to with his hypermasculine offstage demeanor.
Share
Frank DeCaro
08:24
You called him a drag queen. He’d taken the alley and punch in the nose. It was a staunch defender of his masculinity.
Share
Benjamin Fresh
08:30
Drag and female impersonation continued happening in many traditional heterosexual environments well into the 1950s and 60s. Joe E. Jefferys again in New York City.
Share
Joe E. Jeffreys
08:41
In the 60s, there were places like the 82 club, Which was a mafia run establishment in the basement at 82 East 4th Street down in the Bowery, had a lavish floor show of female impersonation, 25, 30 female impersonators and was performing nightly, three times a night for, a primarily heterosexual audience. Because you couldn't serve alcohol to known homosexuals in New York City at this point in time.
Share
Benjamin Fresh
09:16
Some of these performers were female impersonators, but some were a subset of the female impersonator. The celebrity female impersonator. It's hard to pinpoint exactly when celebrity impersonation cross pollinated with female impersonation, But it too can be traced back to the early 20th century stage.
Share
09:37
There was a performer named Albert Carroll who impersonated both male and female celebrities on
Broadway
in the 1920s and 30s. Celebrities like
Groucho Marx
,
John Barrymore
,
Gertrude Lawrence
and even
Queen Elizabeth
the first.
Share
09:50
By the 1950s and 60s, celebrity impersonation was a staple for female impersonators. Some popular figures early on to impersonate would have been
Tallulah Bankhead
,
Katharine Hepburn
and
Mae West
who all had big personalities and mannerisms to imitate.
Share
10:17
Judy Garland
wasn't one of those personalities
Share
Joe E. Jeffreys
10:19
Female Impersonators who I know who are working in the 50s and 60s. Well tell me
Judy Garland
was the last person we wanted to do an act as because, well let's face it, she wasn't glamorous, right? I mean, she's not wearing outrageous outfits. I mean, yes, she has mannerisms that are a little kooky and off.
Share
10:38
I mean, she's imminently imitateable, but as far as how the female impersonators wanted to look and present themselves. She's a little dowdy for them. So they just kind of straight away.
Share
Benjamin Fresh
10:50
Not to mention the voice.
Share
Joe E. Jeffreys
10:52
She's such a vocal powerhouse that to find somebody who can vocally do her life is truly remarkable. So she's a daunting figure to attempt to build an impersonation act around.
Share
Benjamin Fresh
11:05
But over time, and despite the difficulty of doing her vocal justice, Judy became a staple and to explain why I want to explore the idea of divas a bit, explore a little why gay men love certain women from
Mae West
,
Katherine Hepburn
to
Lady Gaga
to
Judy Garland
so much.
Share
11:28
I think that there are two kinds of divas that appeal to gay men, and you can think of them on a spectrum at one pole or the divas that gay men aspire to ultra confident women that have everything under control, have a way of moving through the world and command of the people around them.
Share
11:44
Joan Crawford
is an example of this kind of
Diva.
But
Marlene Dietrich
,
Joan Rivers
and
Madonna
would also probably apply on the other end of the spectrum is not the kind of
Diva
that you want to be necessarily, but the kind of
Diva
you feel you are. These figures are often tragic, whose exploits in the world make you feel a kinship with them figures like
Whitney Houston,
Britney Spears
and
Amy Winehouse
fit this mold.
Share
12:08
But
Judy Garland
is the ultimate feeling
Diva
, an immensely talented woman whose real life was hardly glamorous. Judy was born
Frances Gum
in 1922 into a family of
Vaudeville
performers, making her theatrical debut at age two and a half.
Share
12:25
She had an uneasy home life and lived in fear of her parents separating, which they did constantly. She was signed to
MGM
studios at age 13 and was infamously hooked on pills to keep her weight down and her energy up, and she continued to struggle with addiction through multiple marriages and financial mismanagement for her entire life. Peter mac again.
Share
Peter Mac
12:44
She had bullies at
MGM
you know she was being called names, she was being called a fat little hunchback by the owner of the studio Mr Mayor and told that she was fat, and I had the kids calling me names, and she felt like she didn't fit in here.
Share
12:59
She was with these glamour pusses like
Lana Turner
and
Hedy Lamarr,
and she really felt like the odd kid out, and she came from a broken home, I came from a broken home, so there were things that I could relate to her most famous character is even more relatable as
Dorothy
in
The Wizard of Oz
.
Share
Benjamin Fresh
13:17
She's a girl who leaves an oppressively dull, black and white home to find a color soaked world of friends and a new chosen family where just being yourself is enough to overcome adversity. It's a perfect metaphor for adolescent queer longing.
Share
Break
Benjamin Fresh
15:47
By the 1970s, then, Judy had become a part of the Drag cannon and was being performed by conspicuously queer artists right under the noses of unthinking heterosexuals. You may not have heard of Jim Bailey but, like Liberace and
Elton John
, he was a mainstream success. He became famous in the late 60s for impersonating stars like Judy and
Barbra Streisand,
Frank DeCaro
.
Share
Frank DeCaro
16:09
Again, he had this career that was so absurdly mainstream. I mean, he was on, here's Lucy as
Phyllis Diller
. He performed as
Barbra Streisand
circa.
A Star Is Born
singing, Don't Rain on my parade in an open convertible at a prime-time television salute to the Super Bowl. He was on a Super Bowl salute dressed as
Barbra Streisand
,
if someone takes a spill it's me and my nephew.
Share
16:45
That is the most mind-blowing thing that I think has ever been on TV, related to drag. And it was just what television was like in the 70s, And if you needed further proof of how mainstream Bailey style of Drag impersonation was.
Share
Benjamin Fresh
17:01
Here's Bailey performing as Judy at the opening ceremony of the 1984 winter olympics, Bailey might be the most famous
Judy Garland
impersonator of all time. But there have been many other notable ones.
Share
17:25
T. C. Jones
,
Jimmy Lane
, Caleb Starn, Jimmy James and Tommy Femia to name a few. And then of course there's Peter Mac, who continued to love
Judy Garland's
music into his high school years, in the mid 1990s.
Share
Peter Mac
17:38
I started singing with Judy's albums in my basement, I could come home from a really lousy day at school, having my eyeglasses broken in one case, having a sewing needle, jabbed into my shoulder multiple times and being called every gay slur you can possibly think of. But I would go downstairs and listen to Judy's albums when I got home and sing along with them, and that was how I started singing.
Share
17:58
And then my mom, I started getting me voice lessons. So that's how I started singing. It was because of Judy. She was my first voice teacher, I guess you can't ask for a better voice teacher than
Judy Garland
.
Share
18:18
I did not fit into the kind of hard hat, working class, football neighborhood that I grew up in. It was a tough time. I had missed about 52 days of school, and I was told that I was on the brink of being kicked out of school anyway because of that.
Share
18:42
I would stay home, I was sick. My mother would keep me home, then they would bring social services. She was being an unfit mother. Meanwhile, she was just trying to protect me. Even when mom dropped me off at school, made sure I went into the building, I would walk clear out through the other side because I was terrified.
Share
18:56
And after I miss that many days they decided they would ease me back in and so nobody knew I was there supposedly, and I went from my guidance counselor's office where I was being hidden to a social worker's office. And in the hour that I was gone, I came back and on my winter jacket, it said in bold black marker, "I suck cock".
Share
19:20
And I had a breakdown. I dropped out of high school in the 11th grade because I was on the brink of committing suicide. Second time I thought it would be better to bump myself off. I attribute the fact that I had Judy's records to listen to her movies to watch some of her television shows. That voice is what saved me because I would always turn to that voice to listen to or to sing with and that's what got me through the other end of the tunnel.
Share
19:58
And I signed myself out of school that year and started going on auditions when I was in my senior year, doing eight shows a week and getting paid pretty nice money for it and doing what I loved.
Share
20:17
I did a cabaret show called Judy and me, which was just me singing as myself using Judy songs to tell my story and for me to explain why I feel Judy resonates with the gay community and why she resonated with me and how she saved my life.
Share
20:34
So we did that and then a friend of mine saw it and said this is more than a one-person show, Peter, this is a play. You should really turn this into a play, and I turned it into a six-person play and Judy.
Share
20:49
Whereas in real life I would just listen to her record albums, and they would comfort me every time we hear the music, Judy comes to life, and she counsels me through all of these horrible things that are happening with my mother and father plus the terrible things that are happening in school.
Share
21:04
Uh, initially I was playing myself, and we tried to find an actress to play Judy. We were having a hard time doing so. And a friend of mine said just play Judy Peter. We know you can do the voice, you've done it, just do it. Why don't you play Judy and hire another actor to play yourself? And that's what happened. We just hired another young actor to play me at 16, and I started playing Judy.
Share
Benjamin Fresh
21:40
A big part of Impersonating Judy isn't just the voice, though, it's the mannerisms, the little things during the show. I was really taken by this one detail, the way Peter throws the microphone cord over his shoulder? It appeared studied like, I'm not sure I've ever noticed
Judy Garland
do that during a filmed performance. But seeing Peter do it. It makes you feel like that's the only way Judy could have thrown a microphone cord over her shoulder.
Share
Peter Mac
22:05
You have to immerse yourself in it, You have to listen to the recordings over and over and over again. Watch the movies, watch the television shows. It's homework, but it's fun homework for any of the characters, but particularly for Judy, the elbow that the dangling arm mussing up the hair. All of those little things that she would do, when you're singing the song, slinging the microphone cord over your shoulder.
Share
22:29
If she was here now she would say uh, "marvelous, marvelous Ben, I think it's wonderful you're doing, there's a podcast. I don't really, I know pod people, I don't know podcasts and this is a marvelous way to get your way out there. So maybe it would give me a break here. Get some more people at my shows."
Share
Benjamin Fresh
22:52
Peter doesn't just perform Judy. He and his husband, John Mac do about 60 different women between them,
Joan Crawford
, Bette Davis Ethel Merman Megan Mulally. They're real golden goose is Golden Girls live. Peter plays Sophia, John plays
Dorothy
which pays their bills in which they perform several times a week at the theater. They rent together in the theater district in Manhattan.
Share
23:14
So how did you two meet?
Share
John Mac
23:16
We actually met at a screening of
The Wizard of Oz
Share
Peter Mac
23:21
In
Chelsea
.
Share
John Mac
23:22
It doesn't get gayer than that. I had recently gone through a breakup of many years, and I was sitting there very nervous and Peter and his brother and his aunt came and sat across from me and I thought, oh my God, this kid's really cute.
Share
Peter Mac
23:35
So Judy is not only my guardian
Diva
, but she's also my matchmaker.
Share
Benjamin Fresh
23:38
Peter thinks of what they do more as tribute art than as Drag.
Share
Peter Mac
23:42
Now
Rupaul
has called me a Drag queen and I will gladly take it because I can't think of a higher compliment. I think there's Drag and there's tribute art, and it's not to say that one is better than or superior to, they're just different.
Share
23:55
Drag is typically I think a little more over the top tribute art is more about, it's like character acting, you want to make the audience believe you are that person. And I think drag is just a little bit more larger than life. This I think we walk a fine line.
Share
Benjamin Fresh
24:15
Peter is trying to create the most authentic experience possible.
Share
Peter Mac
24:19
I don't like it to ever be campy or over the top or a caricature, and I've seen that happen too many times with Judy and people were using her addictions to get cheap laughs and portraying her as this pill popping, falling down drunk, and I didn't want to do that.
Share
24:40
My mantra is imitation is supposed to be the sincerest form of flattery, not battery. So that's, that's that's how I approach what I do, and the whole goal is to make the audience when they come into that theater, hopefully by the second or third song, they feel as though they're watching Judy.
Share
24:58
And that by the time they walk out, particularly with the current show that we're doing that, they knew a lot, they know a lot more about her than they did before they walked in. And hoping that we're helping to preserve her legacy.
Share
Benjamin Fresh
25:11
Peter wants to preserve Judy's legacy because he's anxious that Judy as a performer is not as known to younger generations as she used to be, as she should be. But he's trying to change that with a kind of female celebrity impersonation that is itself unlike the kind of Drag you see in gay bars or on
Rupaul's
Drag race sort of on the wane, it's kind of a lost art.
Share
25:32
I think in the Drag scene, Queen Robert is a Brooklyn based drag queen who specializes in impersonations like
Kathy Bates
and
Jennifer Coolidge
Drag used to be considered largely female impersonation now with Drag race. Everybody out there is trying to create their own brand and become their own uh vision and their own character.
Share
25:54
Ironically, creating your own character is more true to the vaudevillian roots of Drag than doing celebrity impersonation, but the point stands that the kind of celebrity impersonation that Peter does, it's just less popular than it used to be.
Share
Peter Mac
26:11
You know, we're so over saturated and celebrities and different people to like that. It's kind of just busy and noisy.
Share
Benjamin Fresh
26:17
It used to be that seeing a celebrity was rare, you'd have to be lucky enough to be in the right city and be paying the right money to see someone perform. I think that that was part of the appeal of the impersonator. They allowed people to experience the glamour of an icon in the comfort of your local gay bar, perhaps hundreds of miles away from New York or Los Angeles these days, celebrities are everywhere.
Share
26:39
If I want to see
Lady Gaga
, I can just type
Lady Gaga
into the search bar on YouTube. They're also more physically accessible with huge mega tours and Las Vegas residencies. There's just a lot less scarcity of celebrity now, and so a lot less need for celebrity impersonators.
Share
26:57
But because Judy died young and so long ago, we don't have access to her in the same way we do with more modern celebrities. But I think that there's another powerful force working in Judy's favor, and that ironically is her place in straight culture.
Share
27:15
Unlike most pieces of a gay culture, early
Judy Garland
fandom comes from being sat in front of
The Wizard of Oz
as a child, in mostly straight households. It's the fact that
The Wizard of Oz
has remained such a classic for everyone that young people continue to be exposed to it and thus so many gay people have the reference point regardless of their background.
Share
27:35
Then, when they're a little older, they find the special queer valence that
Judy Garland
possesses through interaction with other gay people. Bryan Lowder is a writer at slate and co-host of Outward Slate’s LGBTQ podcast.
Share
Bryan Lowder
27:47
For me, it was, there was a sense somewhere along the way where someone was like, you know, you need to be like a good gay, like understand who
Judy Garland
was. And so then I went and like did that sort of haphazard research.
Share
28:03
What is good about it is knowing that our community has had a particular cultural history, not just a political history, not just a history of tragedy and triumph. And that adds richness to like your view of where you come from. Or at least it does for me.
Share
28:21
I mean I have listened to that
Carnegie Hall
concert not so much because I love hearing
Judy Garland
sing, but because I like to think about all of the gays in the audience, you know, in the sixties who were living for her the same way that I might have lived for, you know,
Lady Gaga
when I was in my young early twenties knowing that someone else related to Judy that way is enriching to my sense of myself as a gay person.
Share
Benjamin Fresh
28:52
Queer culture isn't passed down through family lineage in the same way that straight culture is, it's passed down through chosen family. Yes, but it's also passed down through art and media, knowing there is a kind of lineage of love for and devotion to art. It makes you feel a part of a community. Even if the objects of devotion have changed, Peter Mac also sees himself as part of a lineage.
Share
Peter Mac
29:15
As someone once said to me, you know
Judy Garland
is your role. It's ridiculous. Hamlet is nobody's role, any more than
Judy Garland
is anybody's role. What I do with the role makes it my own, but that doesn't make it mine.
Share
John Mac
29:30
From a social aspect with Judy specifically, we have to keep Judy going, one you're brilliant at it. I can say that not just as your husband, but because we feel we have to correct the misperceptions about Judy.
Share
Peter Mac
29:45
Again, one of the things that we hear repeatedly, which is thank you for keeping these people alive. Because again, for the younger generations, they're not familiar with a lot of these ladies, or they don't know the body of work. And so this show where this kind of show brings that and leads them to the real person.
Share
30:07
Because we have the return customers who say I downloaded
Judy At Carnegie Hall
or I bought episodes of the television series, I rented
A Star Is Born
. That's what we want, I want you to go and see the real thing after you see me because there ain't nothing like the real thing personally.
Share
Benjamin Fresh
30:26
I don't think Judy is going anywhere anytime soon. But the idea is that she might, and I try and take that for what it is. the implication that there will be other artists and singers who will mean as much as she did to future generations of gay men because even though the specifics of Judy matter all the songs and her trials and tribulations and how she swings the microphone cord, it's her meaning that matters more.
Share
30:51
The promise that exquisite beauty and joy can coexist with terrible hardship and that, you know, somewhere over the rainbow skies are blue. All you need is to hear Peter mac sing that song which he closes out his show with every night to remind yourself of what Judy is still trying to teach us.
Share
31:11
And how does it feel to sing over the rainbow at the end of the show?
Share
Peter Mac
31:17
I look forward to it because you'll hear murmurs from the audience, especially once they hear the intro, sometimes you'll hear someone crying, and it's, it's, it's huge.
Share
31:34
It's a, it's a big responsibility because as
Liza Minnelli
once said, nobody's saying it better than her mother did. So the pressure is on at that point to really make sure this is it, you gotta, if you haven't won them over by this point. You know, you, you know, you certainly don't want to lose them with over the rainbow, so it's the responsibility to sing that song.
Share
Willa Paskin
32:37
This is Decoder Ring. I’m Benjamin Fresh.
Share
32:40
And I’m Willa Paskin. You can find us on Twitter at Willa Paskin and you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode. You can email us at decoder ring at slate dot com if you haven't yet subscribed and radar feed in apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts and even better tell your friends.
Share
32:56
This podcast was written and produced by Benjamin Fresh and edited by Willa Paskin. Benjamin Fresh also does illustrations for every episode. Cleo Levin is our research assistant. Thanks for Assemble. Andrew Kahn and June Thomas. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you in a few weeks.
Share
Add podcast
🇮🇹 Made with love & passion in Italy. 🌎 Enjoyed everywhere
Build n. 1.38.1
Peter Mac
Willa Paskin
Benjamin Fresh
Joe E. Jeffreys
Frank DeCaro
John Mac
Bryan Lowder
BETA
Sign in
🌎