Decoder Ring | Was "Eyes Wide Shut" a Warning?
Slow Burn
Slate Audio
4.6 • 25.2K Ratings
🗓️ 11 March 2026
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When Eyes Wide Shut opened in the summer of 1999, it was widely considered a disappointment. This final film from legendary director Stanley Kubrick had been sold as an erotic thriller, and potentially even a peek into the real sex lives of its then-married stars, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. But Eyes Wide Shut was stranger than that: a meditative art film whose much-hyped orgy scene is more creepy than sexy, run by a cabal of rich and powerful men who prey on young women.
But Eyes Wide Shut has received a burst of new attention in the last few years, amid constant revelations about a real-life cabal of rich and powerful men who prey on young women. Across the internet, cinema sleuths have been asking: is it possible Eyes Wide Shut was not fictional? Was Stanley Kubrick trying to warn the world about a real conspiracy? And if so… was he murdered for it?
In this episode of Decoder Ring, we follow Lane Brown—a lifelong Kubrick fan and features writer for New York Magazine—as he investigates this conspiracy theory and what it says about how we deal with ugly facts and murky fictions.
This episode was written and produced by Max Freedman and edited by Willa Paskin. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd 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 DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.
Sources for This Episode
Barbezat, Michael. “‘Pizzagate’ and the Nocturnal Ritual Fantasy: Imaginary Cults, Fake News, and Real Violence,” The Public Medievalist, May 4, 2017.
Brown, Lane. “The Eyes Wide Shut Conspiracy,” New York Magazine, Dec. 17, 2025.
Ebiri, Bilge. “An Oral History of an Orgy,” New York Magazine, June 27, 2019.
Nicholson, Amy. “The Year Tom Cruise Gave Not One but Two Dangerously Vulnerable Performances,” The New York Times, Aug. 27, 2024.
Raftery, Brian. “Dream Team: Cruise, Kidman, Kubrick, and the making of Eyes Wide Shut,” New York Magazine, Apr. 15, 2019.
Shapiro, Lila. “What I Learned After Watching Eyes Wide Shut 100 Times,” New York Magazine, July 1, 2019.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Willa. |
| 0:02.5 | Before we get to today's episode, I wanted to let you know that we've just released the next installment of the new feature we're calling Decoder Rings Back. |
| 0:11.9 | On Decoder Rings Back, I call up a listener and try my best to satisfactorily answer a question they've shared with us. |
| 0:18.0 | This week I spoke with our listener, Abner-Gordon, about a spice |
| 0:22.4 | mix that has become ubiquitous. I feel like in my lifetime, there has been a meteoric rise |
| 0:28.5 | in the desire for want of purchasing of everything bagel seasoning. I see it everywhere. It's at Walmart. |
| 0:36.0 | It's at Target. It's at Costco. It's at hopefully everywhere you could possibly buy food has everything bagel seasoning. And I'm just |
| 0:41.6 | curious how we got here because like it's not found in nature. |
| 0:45.7 | This episode of Decoder Rings back is out right now. But it's only available for Decoder |
| 0:50.9 | Ring Plus members. If you're not a plus member yet, you can become one by going to |
| 0:56.8 | the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or visiting slate.com slash decoder |
| 1:03.6 | ring plus. Becoming a plus member instrumentally supports the work that we do. You also get to listen |
| 1:09.7 | to our show and all of Slate podcasts without any ads. |
| 1:13.2 | And you'll get to hear if we happen to ring you back for a future episode. |
| 1:17.4 | So please, sign up now. |
| 1:19.9 | On with the show. |
| 1:24.0 | Before we begin, this episode contains adult language and content. |
| 1:34.5 | In the summer of 1999, Lane Brown was a budding film buff, eager to see one movie in particular. |
| 1:41.4 | I must have been 16 or 17 years old. I had a subscription to Premiere magazine, |
| 1:45.4 | and I understood that this movie was going to be a very big deal. |
| 1:48.5 | The movie was called Eyes Wide Shut. |
| 1:53.4 | I have seen one or two things in my life, |
... |
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