When Slate’s Evan Chung was a kid, he was obsessed with a mysterious advertisement that ran for decades in the scouting magazine Boys’ Life. Under the enticing headline “You Can Float on Air,” the ad assured Evan—and generations of scouts—that a personal hovercraft could be theirs for just a few bucks.
In this episode, the adult version of Evan journeys ha ... Show More
Sep 2023
One Year: 1955 | 2. The Crockett Craze
In 1955, the frontiersman Davy Crockett became the most famous man in America, more than a century after his death at the Alamo. This week, Evan Chung dives into a cultural phenomenon nobody saw coming. Not the kids in coonskin caps who started the craze, not the parents whose mo ... Show More
57m 28s
Jul 2025
Mailbag: Drug Names, Cow Abductions, and the “Ass-Intensifier”
In this episode we’re opening our mailbag to answer three fascinating questions from our listeners. How did “ass,” a word for donkeys and butts, become what linguists call an “intensifier” for just about everything? How do pharmaceuticals get their wacky names? And why do we all ... Show More
48m 1s
May 2024
Your Mind Is Being Fracked
<p>The steady dings of notifications. The 40 tabs that greet you when you open your computer in the morning. The hundreds of unread emails, most of them spam, with subject lines pleading or screaming for you to click. Our attention is under assault these days, and most of us are ... Show More
1h 12m