Making Coal Cute Again
Decoder Ring
Slate Podcasts
4.6 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 11 February 2026
⏱️ 45 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Three weeks ago, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum shared an unusual tweet: a cartoon image of himself with his arm draped around a giant, anthropomorphized lump of coal. This piece of coal has big googly eyes and a smudge of a nose, and is wearing a safety vest and a hard hat. He is, frankly, adorable—and he has a name: Coalie.
When Coalie first appeared on the internet, he went viral—ridiculed on social media, in newsletters, and even on late night talk shows. And that’s because this big-eyed, cute piece of coal was widely understood to be coal propaganda, a tool to soften the coal industry’s image.
But the truth about Coalie is more complicated. His origins tell a story about what it’s like for federal employees to try to do their work while navigating the Trump administration’s agenda. Coalie may be widely seen as a mascot for coal mining, but that’s not what he was made for.
In this episode, you’ll hear from Simone Randolph, Director of Communications for the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE); Sara Eckert, formerly of OSMRE; Slate staff writer Nitish Pahwa; and Leah Stokes, who researches climate and energy policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara and co-hosts the podcast A Matter of Degrees.
Thank you to Daniel Raimi, Tony Ho Tran, and Hannah Northey.
This episode was written by Willa Paskin and Evan Chung and produced by Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. Our show is also produced by Max Freedman and Katie Shepherd. 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.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Willa. |
| 0:02.3 | Before we get to today's episode, I wanted to let you know that we've just released the next installment of the brand new feature we're calling Decoder Rings Back. |
| 0:12.2 | On Decoder Rings Back, I call up a listener and try my best to satisfactorily answer a question they've shared with us. |
| 0:19.3 | This week, I spoke with our listener, Susan, |
| 0:21.4 | about the origins and staying power of a ubiquitous baby blanket. I was watching the pit, |
| 0:29.1 | like I guess everyone else in America these days, an episode where a baby was born, and I noticed |
| 0:36.0 | that there was a receiving blanket, and I was thinking, I know |
| 0:40.4 | that blanket from somewhere. And then I realized the hospitals where I gave birth to my kids, |
| 0:47.3 | they use the same blanket. And my question was, why? Does somebody have a monopoly on receiving blankets and hospitals? |
| 0:57.0 | Why is that blanket always there? |
| 0:59.5 | That episode of Decoder Rings Back is out right now. |
| 1:03.1 | But it's only for Slate Plus members. |
| 1:06.2 | If you are not yet a Slate Plus member, you can join by going to the Decoder Ring show page on Apple |
| 1:12.6 | podcasts or Spotify, or you can visit slate.com slash decoder plus. Becoming a Slate Plus member |
| 1:20.6 | instrumentally supports the work that we do. You also get to listen to our show and all of Slate's |
| 1:27.1 | shows without any ads. and you'll get to |
| 1:29.7 | hear if we happen to ring you back for a future installment of Decoder Rings Back. So please, |
| 1:37.1 | sign up. Now, on with the show. |
| 1:50.6 | Three weeks ago, my Slate colleague, Nitishpawa, who writes about energy and climate change, |
| 1:54.3 | among other things, was looking at acts, as he often does for work. Yeah, I was just scrolling mind in my own business. When I all of a sudden just see a post from our interior secretary, |
| 2:03.1 | Doug Bergam, I'm just looking at this. I'm gobsmacked. |
| 2:08.2 | Bergam, a businessman and the former governor of North Dakota, was appointed secretary of the |
... |
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