Decoder Ring: What's Really Going On Inside a Mosh Pit?
Slow Burn
Slate Audio
4.6 • 25.2K Ratings
🗓️ 19 July 2023
⏱️ 31 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
The mosh pit has a reputation as a violent place where (mostly) white guys vent their aggression. There’s some truth to that, but it’s also a place bound by camaraderie and—believe it or not—etiquette. In this episode, we explore the unwritten rules of this 50-year-old, live-music phenomenon with punks, concertgoers and a heavy metal physicist.
Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin with Katie Shepherd. This episode was written by Katie Shepherd. This episode was edited by Willa Paskin and Andrea Bruce, with help from Joel Meyer. Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.
Thank you to Vivien Goldman, Paolo Ragusa, and Philip Moriarty whose insights and research on moshing were crucial to this episode. You can create your own mosh pit using this simulator developed by Jesse Silverberg and his colleagues.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, listeners, I'm Joel Anderson, host of Slow Burn, Becoming Justice Thomas. |
| 0:05.1 | Thanks to all of you who listened to our four-part series on the unlikely journey of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. |
| 0:11.5 | We're already hard at work on our next season of Slow Burn, but in the meantime, we're going to use this space to showcase some of Slate's other great narrative podcasts, starting with Decoder Ring, |
| 0:21.3 | which is all about cracking cultural mysteries, many of them from the past. After that, |
| 0:26.3 | you'll hear our history podcast one year, which explores the forgotten stories and wildest |
| 0:31.3 | moments that changed America, one year at a time. So keep listening. Here's Dakota Ring host, |
| 0:38.1 | Willa Paskin. |
| 0:43.3 | Before we begin, this episode contains adult language. |
| 0:56.9 | In 1991, when Joel Meyer, a senior editor and producer at Slate, was 14 years old, |
| 1:02.1 | he went to the very first Lollapalooza concert tour when it stopped in St. Paul, Minnesota. |
| 1:06.4 | It might have even been my first concert without a parent involved. There were so many bands he and his friends loved playing. |
| 1:10.7 | Jane's addiction, living color, and especially Henry Rollins from the hardcore band, Black Flag. |
| 1:20.6 | We thought he was kind of the coolest guy that we had ever seen. |
| 1:24.8 | As Joel and his buddies watch Henry Rollins sweating and shirtless and caught up in the moment, |
| 1:30.2 | they got caught up in the moment too, full of energy and fearlessness and adolescent boy, |
| 1:35.3 | umph. |
| 1:36.0 | They decided they needed to go into the mosh pit. |
| 1:41.0 | Because I'm a very cautious and conservative person by nature, I think I was maybe the last person to go in, but then I did it. |
| 1:48.0 | A mosh pit is a staple of a Henry Rollins show. |
| 1:56.0 | The problem is I wear glasses, and I have had to wear glasses since the fourth grade, and I can't see anything without them. |
| 2:06.9 | Within about maybe 20 seconds of going into the pit, lost those glasses right away, and I was terrified. |
| 2:12.8 | He couldn't see very well. He sure wasn't going to be able to see any of the other bands, and his mom was |
... |
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