Slow Burn - Slow Burn presents: Decoder Ring - The Mall is Dead (Long Live the Mall)
Slate Daily Feed
Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 26 July 2022
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
(While we work on the next season of Slow Burn we're showcasing Slate's other narrative podcasts, starting with a new season of Decoder Ring.)
What do we lose if we lose the mall? 70 years into their existence, these hulking temples to commerce are surprisingly resilient and filled with contradictions. In this episode, Alexandra Lange, the author of the new book Meet Me at the Fountain: an Inside History of the Mall walks us through the atriums, escalators, and food courts of this singular suburban space. We also hear from mall-goers whose personal experiences help us make sense of this disdained yet beloved, disappearing yet surviving place.
This episode of Decoder Ring was written by Willa Paskin and produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd. Derek John is Sr. Supervising Producer of Narrative Podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our Technical Director.
If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com
If you love the show and want to support us, consider joining Slate Plus. With Slate Plus you get ad-free podcasts, bonus episodes, and total access to all of Slate’s journalism.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hi, listeners. I'm Susan Matthews, host of Slowburn Roe v. Wade. Thanks to everyone who listened to our |
| 0:06.3 | four-part series on what life was like before Roe v. Wade if you haven't listened to it yet. It's an in-depth |
| 0:11.7 | look at a period of time that is obviously incredibly relevant now, but I think that it was also |
| 0:17.1 | kind of forgotten and misunderstood. We're already hard at work on the next season of |
| 0:21.4 | Slow Burn, but in the meantime, we're going to use this space to showcase some of our other |
| 0:25.3 | great narrative podcasts. And today, I'm so excited to introduce Willa Paskin, host of one of my |
| 0:30.8 | favorite shows, Dakota Ring. They've got a new batch of episodes that we'll be featuring here |
| 0:35.5 | over the next few weeks. Hi, Willa. |
| 0:37.9 | Hi, Susan. |
| 0:39.1 | I'm so happy to have you here. |
| 0:41.0 | I think that Dakota Ring has a lot in common with Slow Burn, particularly in its sound-rich |
| 0:47.0 | design and its narrative style, but it's going to be like a little bit lighter, I assume. |
| 0:52.4 | You take on completely different subjects. |
| 0:54.6 | Can you tell me how you describe the show to people? |
| 0:58.2 | Decodering is a narrative podcast that is kind of fun. |
| 1:02.4 | I mean, we're serious, too, but we're also fun. |
| 1:05.1 | We look at culture and pop culture sort of from the 20th century and just try to answer questions about it. |
| 1:12.4 | Some of those questions you may have been wondering about, like why everyone's so obsessed |
| 1:16.5 | with drinking water all the time these days. And some of those questions you maybe haven't been |
| 1:21.3 | thinking about, but hopefully are really interesting. Like the proliferation of throw pillows. |
| 1:26.4 | That was one where like, I have not been thinking |
| 1:28.4 | about it, but then I listened to that episode and was like, oh, God, this is me. What have been some of |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.