Decoder Ring: The Truth About #TheDress

Slate Technology

Slate

Society & Culture, Technology, History

4.6 • 636 Ratings

🗓️ 15 November 2022

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the history of viral images, #TheDress has got to be in the top 10. This unassuming photo of a party dress kicked off a global debate when people realized they were seeing it completely differently. Is it black and blue, or white and gold? In today’s episode, we’ll talk to someone who was there when the photo was first taken, and the BuzzFeed writer whose post briefly broke the internet. Then we go down the optical rabbit hole with a neuroscientist who’s been studying the The Dress for years. What does it reveal about the nature of truth? This podcast was written by Willa Paskin, who produces Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd. This episode was edited by Andrew Adam Newman. Derek John is Slate’s senior supervising producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is senior technical director. We’ll hear from Paul Jinks, Cates Holderness, Pascal Wallisch, and David McRaney author of the book How Minds Change. Here’s the optical illusion of the strawberries mentioned in the episode and created by Professor Akiyoshi Kitaoka. If you haven’t please yet, subscribe and rate our feed in Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends. If you’re a fan of the show, I’d love for you to sign up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get to listen to Decoder Ring — and every other Slate podcast — ad-free. Their support is also crucial to our work. So please go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today. Check out Remote Works here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	In February of 2015, Paul Jinks and his then-girlfriend, Cecilia Blesdale, were shopping at an outlet mall near Liverpool, England.
0:16.1	Cecilia was looking for something in particular, a blue dress to wear to her daughter's wedding.
0:21.7	She found these three dresses, all blue. And she goes, I don't know, I don't know which one.
0:27.1	So she goes, I know, I'm going to take a picture of each and send them to her daughter Grace.
0:31.7	Paul held up the three dresses in turn, and Cecilia took a picture of each of them with her cell phone.
0:37.2	And then she texted all three photos to her daughter.
0:40.5	Yeah, they all look all right.
0:41.9	But I thought you said they're all blue.
0:43.6	He said, well, they are.
0:45.8	And she's going, well, the third one he said was golden white.
0:48.6	Paul was holding the dress in question in his hands as these texts were coming in.
0:54.4	It was undoubtedly a royal blue dress with black lace detailing.
1:00.7	Then Cecilia held up a phone to me, says, what color is that?
1:03.9	I went, oh, it does look golden white in the picture.
1:06.6	And that's where it started from.
1:16.4	Yeah. And that's where it started from. This is decodering.
1:18.5	I'm Willa Paskin.
1:19.7	In the history of viral images, the dress has got to be in the top ten.
1:24.7	This unassuming photograph of a party dress kicked off a global what the
1:30.5	hell when people realized they were seeing it completely differently. In today's episode,
1:37.0	we're going down the optical rabbit hole known as the dress. We'll watch it achieve global
1:43.6	infamy burrow into how it works with a scientist
	...

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