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Slow Burn

Decoder Ring | I am Tupperware, I Contain Multitudes

Slow Burn

Slate Podcasts

News, Society & Culture, History, Documentary, Politics

4.625.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 January 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The storage container is a stealthy star of the modern home. It’s something we use to organize more of our stuff than ever before, and also something other people use to organize their stuff for our viewing pleasure. Its role as a source of soothing, satisfying, potentially viral clicks is new, but storage container innovations are not – something we had occasion to remember when Tupperware, the company, recently filed for bankruptcy. Tupperware was the original container craze. In today’s episode we’re going to connect it to the contemporary one, because as it happens, for a long time now, we’ve been filling empty plastic boxes with far more than just leftovers.   This episode was reported and produced by Olivia Briley. It was edited by Willa Paskin. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin, Evan Chung, Katie Shepherd and Max Freedman. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. In this episode, you’ll hear from Amanda Mull who wrote the articles “Tupperware Is in Trouble” and “Home Influencers Will Not Rest Until Everything Has Been Put in a Clear Plastic Storage Bin.” And from Bob Kealing, the author of Tupperware Unsealed Brownie Wise, Earl Tupper, and the Home Party Pioneers. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at [email protected] Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Before we begin, this episode contains adult language.

0:10.3

Amanda Mull is a senior reporter at Bloomberg Business Week, where she writes a column trying to make sense of consumer culture.

0:17.6

Seeing people's neuroses and emotional lives play out and the way that they choose to spend

0:23.4

time and money is fascinating to me. Amanda is always noticing things. And last year, she became

0:30.2

very curious about a strange kind of video that's all over the internet. It's time for another

0:36.0

drink fridge restock. It's been a little over a month, so we're going to get it full again.

0:41.3

You just tell me what a restocking video is.

0:44.3

Restocking videos are usually a few minutes long.

0:46.3

They are generally sort of a close-up on a woman's hands,

0:50.3

taking a set of containers, usually out of a refrigerator, out of a pantry,

0:55.8

out of a laundry room.

0:57.7

And then those hands start filling the containers with stuff.

1:02.1

Food or cleaning products stuffed and stacked and plunked and crunched and peeled and

1:07.9

chopped and decanted.

1:09.1

Just thing after thing after thing being put inside of all of these crystal clear containers.

1:14.6

The hands are disembodied. You can't see who they belong to.

1:18.6

And the women rarely talk. They let the containers speak for themselves.

1:23.6

A lot of people find the sound of things getting sort of crunched and plunked and put into these containers.

1:30.0

Very satisfying. And then those containers are put back in the pantry, in the laundry room, wherever.

1:37.1

And we're all stocked up. It looks so beautiful, nice and full again.

1:42.2

And where you had disarray, you now have order.

1:46.1

Everything is abundant and you have all of your choices in front of you.

...

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