Decoder Ring - No Pulp: The Killing of the Florida Orange

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Society & Culture, Business, News

3.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2026

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Like the palm tree, the Everglades, Disney World, and the “Florida Man,” the orange is a classic symbol of the Sunshine State. But maybe not for much longer. Production has declined to catastrophic levels, a decrease of more than 95% in less than 25 years. It’s a produce murder mystery—and Decoder Ring is tagging along with reporter Alex Sammon to crack the case. The suspects include insects, hurricanes, mortgage-backed securities, and the American habit of not reckoning with enormous, load-bearing flaws until it’s way too late.

In this episode, you’ll hear from Alex, a feature writer at Slate, who visited Florida to check on the orange and write about its demise. You’ll also hear from Gary Mormino, Florida lover, expert, and professor emeritus of Florida Studies at the University of South Florida.

This episode was produced by Katie Shepherd and Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. It was edited by Josh Levin. Decoder Ring is also produced by Willa Paskin and Max Freedman. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com 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.

Sources for This Episode

Hamilton, Alissa. Squeezed: What You Don't Know about Orange Juice, Yale University Press, 2010.

Hussey, Scott D. “The Sunshine State's Golden Fruit: Florida And The Orange,1930-1960,” USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Apr. 2, 2010.

McPhee, John. Oranges, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967.

Mormino, Gary. “The enduring but endangered symbol of Florida,” The Gainesville Sun, Apr. 3, 2016.

Sammon, Alex. “Who Killed The Florida Orange?” Slate, Apr. 20, 2026.

Walkey, Will and Amory Sivertson. “The fall of Florida citrus,” On Point, Aug. 19, 2025

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Transcript

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0:00.0	A couple of weeks ago, I read a piece one of my colleagues wrote about a beloved American classic, and I immediately reached out to talk to him about it.
0:13.5	My name is Alex Salmon. I'm a features writer here at Slate.
0:17.2	And Alex, like, what's your relationship to orange juice?
0:22.0	I don't know. I think, like most people I drink it regularly, unthinkingly as a child.
0:28.2	It was refreshing and it was delicious. I mean, it was better than water and it was sweeter than milk.
0:33.3	So, yeah, that it was great.
0:35.1	Orange is smart for drinking orange juice for that clean and sunny taste.
0:43.1	Hey, orange is smart.
0:44.8	Wait, so I literally, I think I drank orange juice with every single meal in my child.
0:51.1	I think I had orange juice as much as water.
0:53.3	That's incredible.
0:54.7	We used to my sister. I used to eat when my parents went away. We'd have orange for dinner, so we would
0:58.0	have mac and cheese and carrots and orange cheese. Wow, okay. I didn't have any color-coded
1:05.2	meals, but I remember drinking it at school. I remember drinking it at home. You know, it was,
1:09.4	it felt like it was everywhere.
1:16.4	And the orange juice that Alex and I grew up with, the orange juice we guzzled down on every occasion at seemingly every location. It famously came from one place.
1:21.5	100% pure Florida quality orange juice. It makes you feel so good.
1:26.6	How connected is Florida and the orange?
1:28.7	You know, there's a reason it's on the license plate. It's a massive industry.
1:31.9	I mean, is there another agricultural, I mean, Iowa and corn maybe is like on the same level.
1:37.2	You know, actually, maybe an app comparison is like, it's like California and Hollywood.
1:41.5	Like, it's on that level, I think.
	...

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