Hi, I'm Clarissa Dernetterlanden, and welcome to the Decoder Ring Theater Season 1 Spectacular.

And that's more or less how we kicked things off the last time we did one of these things,

10 years ago ago with our season

one spectacular at the time we were still astonished enough that enough people were listening to

the shows we were creating to justify a season two much less three through 11 inclusive.

It has been a long and crazy road,

one that has more or less entirely consumed my creative life for the last decade,

and brought us new opportunities, new friendships,

and a host of people around the world hanging from our words as if they meant something,

which is a tremendous gift that I don't thank you all often enough for.

So why now? Why is there a season 11 spectacular when there wasn't a season two or five or seven?

Well, there are a few reasons. First of all, for a long time, I think it's fair to say there was

no time for such a thing. At all. There was a long time when we were producing 24 full-length

episodes a year, and I didn't have time to catch a cold, much less produce a loving retrospective.

But things are a little easier around these parts now, and it seemed like a nice time to catch up.

And to that end, we have some chatter with some of your favorite decodering theater voices

and some hidden treasures to share.

It'll be fun.

That's the first reason.

Second, and more importantly, it seemed like a good opportunity to get you all in one metaphorical place and talk about season 12.

So we're all on the same page, and I don't get 32,000 individual emails asking me, hey, what's the deal with season 12?

So here's the deal with season 12.

...