Hi, it's Willa. Welcome back and Happy New Year. We have a brand spanking new

feature for you today, and it's a little different than our usual episode, so I want to tell you about it.

A couple of weeks ago, we asked people who listen to Decodering to consider supporting the show by signing up for our membership program, Slate Plus.

It went really well.

We have a lot of new subscribers to whom we are extraordinarily grateful.

They're helping us to do our work and we really appreciate it.

As a thank you and to make a Slate Plus membership even more worth everyone's while, we're starting a brand new segment called Decoder Rings Back.

We're calling it that because we will be ringing back listeners to answer their questions directly.

We're really lucky to get lots of listeners suggestions for the show.

You heard some great ones in the mailbag episode we just put out last month.

But we actually get even more good questions than we can possibly answer that way.

So we're starting this new additional way to take on listener queries.

Once a month, I'm going to personally call up a listener who has written to us or left

us a voicemail, and we are going to have a conversation based on extensive research in which

I try my damnedest to satisfyingly answer their question.

If you have a question you want to explain to you, all you have to do is email decodering

at slate.com or call us at 347-460-7281. We'll read and sort through the questions, select a

handful of them, and then get in touch to bore down a little deeper into your curiosity. We'll

then find out everything we can and call you back to try and give you the answer. So what

happened to lime candy? Why are women popping out of giant cakes a thing? When did people

start painting their houses, Matt Black? These are the sort of things I'll be calling to explain.

There is one catch, though. After this inaugural installment, all future episodes of Decoder

...