Decoder Ring | Cozy Autumn Mysteries

Slate Culture

Slate Podcasts

Arts, Tv & Film, Music

4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 November 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Autumn may have more cozy signifiers than any other season—though we all have our own favorites. Maybe for you it’s sweater weather, football games, spooky season, apple picking, leaf peeping, or mainlining candy corn. Whatever it is, in today’s episode we’re looking closely at three of these autumnal staples. First, we get to the bottom of a recurring complaint about the taste of the pumpkin spice latte. Then we gaze deep inside the enigma hiding inside colorful fall leaves. Finally we ask some hard-hitting questions about the seasonal availability of an elusive cookie. Snuggle up and enjoy! In this episode, you’ll hear from author and podcaster Don Martin who has a new audiobook out about loneliness called Where Did Everybody Go?. We also speak with Simcha Lev-Yadun, professor of botany and archeology; Susanne Renner, botanist and honorary professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis; and Prospect Park Alliance arborist Malcom Gore. And you’ll also hear from Lauren Tarr, who runs the blog Midlife Moxie and Muscle, and her mother Grace Dewey, along with Caroline Suppiger, brand manager at Mondelēz. We’d also like to thank Brian Gallagher, Tom Arnold, Sylvie Russo and Laura Robinson. This episode was produced by Katie Shepherd. Decoder Ring is also produced by Willa Paskin, 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 [email protected] 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 or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:35.6	We tend to think of seasonal traditions as old, established.
0:40.3	They're off-repeated and so presumably something we've done before.
0:44.7	And yet, all traditions have to start somewhere.
0:48.5	Santa Claus was not always a fat, rosy-cheeked man with a white beard and a red suit
0:53.0	until he showed up in a Coca-Cola ad in
0:55.1	the early 1930s. The same decade, kids started trick-or-treating. Old Lanzine didn't become the
1:01.0	New Year's song until Guy Lombardo's band played it on the radio in 1929. And Mariah Carey's
1:06.9	All I Want for Christmas couldn't top the charts every December until it was actually released in 1994. And one of the fall seasons, most sippable autumnal traditions, did not
1:18.4	become established until 2003. Could you have ever imagined the cultural shift that happened
1:26.4	when Starbucks debuted the Pumpkin Spice spice latte, like just the obsession.
1:31.2	Wow.
1:32.6	Don Martin is a writer and podcaster who has thought a lot about the Starbucks pumpkin spice line since he started ordering frappuccinos in college.
1:41.5	Back then, I was all about like give me a big, frothy pumpkin spice flavored, basically
1:47.7	milkshake that, like, somebody had whispered the word coffee next to.
1:51.5	I think I have a photo of me with some terrible hair of, like, French kissing at pumpkin spice
1:58.8	rapuccino.
2:00.1	How do you French kiss a pumpkin spice love vurchina?
	...

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