Decoder Ring | Off-the-Wall Stories of Off-Label Use

Slate Culture

Slate Podcasts

Arts, Tv & Film, Music

4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Products often tell you exactly how they’re intended to be used. But why leave it at that? As a culture, we have long had a knack for finding ingenious, off-label uses for things. In this episode, we take a close look at a few examples of products that are ostensibly meant for one thing, but are better known for something else entirely. We explore Q-tips, which we are explicitly told not to put into our ears; the Hitachi Magic Wand, the iconic sex toy marketed as a body massager; the musical washboard; and the children’s electrolyte solution Pedialyte that many adults swear by as a hangover cure. You’ll hear from Hallie Lieberman, author of Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy; Jacqui Barnett of the Columbus Washboard Company; Christopher Wilson, curator and chair of the Division of Home and Community Life at the Smithsonian; musician and educator Súle Greg Wilson; zydeco musicians C.J. Chenier and Steve Nash; Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall, author of Hungover: The Morning After and One Man’s Quest for the Cure; as well as writers Roberto Ferdman, Dan Brooks, and Kaitlyn Tiffany. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin, Max Freedman, Katie Shepherd, and Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. We had additional production from Sofie Kodner. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Special thanks to Kate Sloan, Dr. Carol Queen, Bryony Cole, Amber Singer, Molly Born, Laura Selikson, and Nell McShane Wulfhart. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at [email protected], or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281. Sources for This Episode Bishop-Stall, Shaughnessy. Hungover: The Morning After and One Man’s Quest for the Cure, Penguin, 2018. Brooks, Dan. “Letter of Recommendation: Pedialyte,” New York Times Magazine, Jan. 26, 2017. Comella, Lynn. Vibrator Nation: How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure, Duke University Press, 2017. Dodson, Betty. “Having Sex with Machines: The Return of the Electric Vibrator,” Dodson and Ross, June 9, 2010. Feran, Tim. “Pedialyte Is Not Just For Kids,” Columbus Dispatch, July 19, 2015. Ferdman, Roberto A. “The strange life of Q-tips, the most bizarre thing people buy,” Washington Post, Jan. 20, 2016. Kushner, David. “Inside Orgasmatron,” Village Voice, March 26, 1999. Lieberman, Hallie. Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy, Pegasus Books, 2017. Lieberman, Hallie. “Selling Sex Toys: Marketing and the Meaning of Vibrators in Early Twentieth-Century America,” Enterprise & Society, June 2016. Russel, Ruth. “Hangover Remedies? I’ll Drink to That!,” Idaho Statesman, Jan. 1, 1978. Sloan, Kate. Making Magic, 2024. Tiffany, Kaitlyn. “How Pedialyte got Pedialit,” Vox, Sep. 10, 2018. Williams, Dell. “The Roots of the Garden,” Journal of Sex Research, August 1990. Wulfhart, Nell McShane. “The Best Hangover Cure,” Slate, Aug. 29, 2013. 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

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	A heads up before we begin. There's a segment in this episode that contains adult content.
0:05.4	We'll let you know when we get there.
0:12.2	Roberto Ferdeman is a journalist, and a couple years ago, he became so fascinated by a completely
0:17.5	ordinary household object that he had to write about it.
0:21.4	I've known for the longest time that Q-tips are not meant to be used inside of your ear,
0:26.0	and yet everyone still does it.
0:28.1	Roberto does it, I do it, according to ENTs and studies about Q-Tip use.
0:32.8	You probably do it too.
0:34.2	And frankly, Q-tips look made to stick in your ear. They are perfectly ear canal-sized.
0:42.1	And then there's how it feels when you stick them in and give them a good swirl.
0:47.4	It's satisfying. I mean, I hate to say it, but it's not just satisfying because it feels good.
0:52.0	It's also quite satisfying when you see what you've taken out of your ear.
0:55.0	You're like, wow, like I'm like two pounds lighter at least.
0:58.6	In fact, it's disappointing when you clean your ears with cutips so much that they're
1:01.5	to clean all the time.
1:02.4	You almost want to wait and just get like a gross, orange, disgusting Q-tip.
1:07.9	I am embarrassed at how relatable that is.
1:11.7	It's not clear exactly when people started sticking Q-tip. I am embarrassed at how relatable that is. It's not clear exactly when people started sticking Q-tips in their ears, but it was soon
1:16.9	after they were invented.
1:18.6	So Q-tips, as they were originally conceived, this was in the early 1920s, were used for baby care.
1:25.0	The story goes that a man named Leo Gertzen-Zang saw that his wife had affixed a puff of cotton to the top of a toothpick to preen their infant daughter to apply ointment, clean crevices, wipe up moisture.
1:36.7	And a light bulb went off. He was like, people need this. Mothers. Fathers need this. So he invented what was originally called Q-Tips baby gaze, the Q-Stee
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.