Decoder Ring | Off-the-Wall Stories of Off-Label Use

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 [email protected], 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 Machines: The Return of the Electric Vibrator,” Dodson and Ross, June 9, 2010.Feran, Tim. “Pedialyte Is Not Just For Kids,” Columbus Dispatch, July 19, 2015.Ferdman, Roberto A. “The strange life of Q-tips, the most bizarre thing people buy,” Washington Post, Jan. 20, 2016.Kushner, David. “Inside Orgasmatron,” Village Voice, March 26, 1999.Lieberman, Hallie. Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy, Pegasus Books, 2017.Lieberman, Hallie. “Selling Sex Toys: Marketing and the Meaning of Vibrators in Early Twentieth-Century America,” Enterprise & Society, June 2016.Russel, Ruth. “Hangover Remedies? I’ll Drink to That!,” Idaho Statesman, Jan. 1, 1978.Sloan, Kate. Making Magic, 2024.Tiffany, Kaitlyn. “How Pedialyte got Pedialit,” Vox, Sep. 10, 2018.Williams, Dell. “The Roots of the Garden,” Journal of Sex Research, August 1990.Wulfhart, Nell McShane. “The Best Hangover Cure,” Slate, Aug. 29, 2013.Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slow Burn illuminates America’s most consequential moments, making sense of the past to better understand the present. Through archival tape and first-person interviews, the series uncovers the surprising events and little-known characters lurking within the biggest stories of our time.

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Season 10: The Rise of Fox News
How a cable news channel became a cultural and political force—and how a whole bunch of people rose up to try and stop it.

Season 9: Gays Against Briggs
A nationwide moral panic, a California legislator who rode the anti-gay wave, and the LGBTQ+ people who stepped up and came out to try and stop him.

Season 8: Becoming Justice Thomas
Where Clarence Thomas came from, how he rose to power, and how he’s brought the rest of us along with him, whether we like it or not. Winner of the Podcast of the Year at the 2024 Ambies Awards.

Season 7: Roe v. Wade
The women who fought for legal abortion, the activists who pushed back, and the justices who thought they could solve the issue for good. Winner of Apple Podcasts Show of the Year in 2022.

Season 6: The L.A. Riots
How decades of police brutality, a broken justice system, and a video tape set off six days of unrest in Los Angeles.

Season 5: The Road to the Iraq War
Eighteen months after 9/11, the United States invaded a country that had nothing to do with the attacks. Who’s to blame? And was there any way to stop it?

Season 4: David Duke
America’s most famous white supremacist came within a runoff of controlling Louisiana. How did David Duke rise to power? And what did it take to stop him?

Season 3: Biggie and Tupac
How is it that two of the most famous performers in the world were murdered within a year of each other—and their killings were never solved?

Season 2: The Clinton Impeachment
A reexamination of the scandals that nearly destroyed the 42nd president and forever changed the life of a former White House intern.

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What did it feel like to live through the scandal that brought down President Nixon?

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