About this episode
Products often tell you exactly how they’re intended to be used. But why leave it at that? As a culture, we have long had a knack for finding ingenious, off-label uses for things. In this episode, we take a close look at a few examples of products that are ostensibly meant for one thing, but are better known for something else entirely. We explore Q-tips, which we are explicitly told not to put into our ears; the Hitachi Magic Wand, the iconic sex toy marketed as a body massager; the musical washboard; and the children’s electrolyte solution Pedialyte that many adults swear by as a hangover cure.You’ll hear from Hallie Lieberman, author of Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy; Jacqui Barnett of the Columbus Washboard Company; Christopher Wilson, curator and chair of the Division of Home and Community Life at the Smithsonian; musician and educator Súle Greg Wilson; zydeco musicians C.J. Chenier and Steve Nash; Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall, author of Hungover: The Morning After and One Man’s Quest for the Cure; as well as writers Roberto Ferdman, Dan Brooks, and Kaitlyn Tiffany.Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin, Max Freedman, Katie Shepherd, and Evan Chung, Decoder Ring’s supervising producer. We had additional production from Sofie Kodner. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Special thanks to Kate Sloan, Dr. Carol Queen, Bryony Cole, Amber Singer, Molly Born, Laura Selikson, and Nell McShane Wulfhart.If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at DecoderRing@slate.com, or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281.Sources for This EpisodeBishop-Stall, Shaughnessy. Hungover: The Morning After and One Man’s Quest for the Cure, Penguin, 2018.Brooks, Dan. “Letter of Recommendation: Pedialyte,” New York Times Magazine, Jan. 26, 2017.Comella, Lynn. Vibrator Nation: How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure, Duke University Press, 2017.Dodson, Betty. “Having Sex with
