Slow Burn - Decoder Ring: Who Owns the Tooth Fairy?

Decoder Ring

Slate Podcasts

Society & Culture, Documentary, History

4.6 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2023

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We pride ourselves on being grounded, rational beings, but flitting amongst us is a mystery: the Tooth Fairy. This flying piece of folklore is alive and well in the 21st century, handed down to kids in whatever way their parents see fit.

In this episode, with the help of Tinkerbell, Santa Claus, and some savvy humans who are trying to exploit this strange creature’s untapped intellectual property, we’ll explore the origins of this childhood ritual, its durability—and its remarkable resistance to commercialization.

This podcast was written by Willa Paskin, who produces Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd. This episode was edited by Jamie York. Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

Thank you to Charles Duan, Jim Piddock, Purva Merchant, Hannah Morris, Laurie Leahy, Torie Bosch, and Rebecca Onion. Also, a big tip of the hat to Rosemary Wells, the dental school instructor who in the 1970s began exploring the Tooth Fairy’s, ahem, roots . Much of Wells’ work is out of print, but you can find one of her pieces in a collection called The Good People: New Fairylore Essays.

If you haven’t please yet, subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends.

If you’re a fan of the show, sign up for Slate Plus. You’ll be able to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads—and your support is crucial to our work. Go to www.slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today.

Decoder Ring is now available on YouTube. Listen here: https://slate.trib.al/ucMyTst

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Jonathan Braylock, I'm Dra. Milligan, and I'm James III. And we're those of Black
0:09.2	Pink and Jump in Hollywood. It's a comedic podcast that reviews films with leading actors
0:13.7	of color and analyze them in the context of race and Hollywood's diversity issues.
0:17.7	Yeah, listen to new episodes on Mondays. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. I don't
0:22.7	care where you get them. I just want you to listen. Don't threaten the people we need
0:26.9	them to listen. Okay. Okay. Okay. Sorry, guys. Listen. Listen to us. Yeah. Put on a happy
0:32.5	voice. Before we begin, if you're listening to this episode with children or with children
0:45.1	even in the room, please take a close look at the title and episode description before
0:51.6	continuing. We're going to be talking about the subjects mentioned there very matter
0:57.2	of factly. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, elbow, elbow, ho, ho, please go check. I find myself
1:12.7	at a certain stage of life. Is it wiggly? What's going to have when you lose it? Um, the
1:19.1	two fairies feel like that. My children are losing their baby teeth. What do you do with
1:25.3	your teeth? I put them in my toothbrush below. And what happened in the morning? The two
1:29.8	three takes it and then I get, she gives me money and she flies away. The amount they
1:35.3	get for each tooth, a dollar is what I got as a kid and the tooth pillow they used was
1:40.5	mine too. But the questions they have are all their own. I wonder what all the two
1:47.2	fairies, if they have a ward to live in, like a town or a ward or a country or something
1:54.2	like we do. Yeah, totally. I feel like they might like make their
1:59.0	houses dirty. He's going to be able to take a long time because they're big. Pixies are
2:03.7	the type one. The fairies have their own two fairies. That is a great question. You know
2:11.2	I actually kind of think they do. There's six and eight and I must have thought about
2:16.7	things like this when I was their age. Though I seriously doubt I thought anything as good
	...

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