Apple Card is the perfect credit card for every purchase. It has cashback rewards unlike others. You earn unlimited daily cashback on every purchase, receive a daily and can grow it at 4.15% to annual percentage yield when you open a high yield savings account. Apply for Apple Card in the wallet app on iPhone and start earning and growing your daily cash with savings today. Apple Card's subject to credit approval. Savings is available to Apple Card owners, subject to eligibility requirements.
Savings accounts provided by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Member FDIC, Terms Apply. Before we begin, this episode contains some adult language. You know one when you hear one. Buzzinga. I'm talking about a catchphrase. How you doing? A catchphrase is a phrase. Maybe it's just a few words. Eat my shorts. Ah, as if. Yeah, baby. Maybe it's even a made upward. Shazine you. Dau! It could be that made upward twice. Nano. Nano. Or three times. Yada, yada, yada. I never heard from them again.
It's often very closely associated with a performer or character. Grapes a mouth! What the rock is cooking. And it catches on seemingly everywhere. Go ahead. Make my day. Not only do people recognize a phrase like this, they use it. And I have only one thing to say to the tax increases. Go ahead. Make my day. That's President Ronald Reagan quoting the line made famous by Clint Eastwood.
It was 1985 and the famed Mano culture was reaching millions of people, delivering the same snappy sound bites to all of them. And doing it so effectively that decades later, we're still swimming in catch races from the past. Well, don't have a cow, man. It's time for a mua polusa, the signature event at the Wisconsin State Fair. Oh, yeah. Good day to get out and stream. Yeah, but never do. It's going to be nice. I want to thank everybody here and Castila Vista. Baby, thank you.
That's from former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's farewell speech last year. And yet he's quoting an Arnold Schwarzenegger line. It's more than three decades old. And it is difficult to find a recent catchphrase that's quite so recognizable. But that's not because the catchphrase is dead. It's just because it's changed. What the what? What the what? What the what? This is Dakota Ring. I'm Willa Paskin. Every catchphrase has a life cycle.
It starts like any other line, but then audiences warm to it. They love it. They elevate it. And it starts to get repeated. And as it does, some of the people who loved it start to roll their eyes when they hear it. Even as this phrase is burrowing deeper and deeper into our collective lexicon. And this isn't just what happens to any one catchphrase. It's what's happened to the catchphrase itself. Aform some people love and others sneer at even as it remains totally inescapable.
So we're going to look at the catchphrase with clear eyes and full hearts. We're going to consider how they lived long and prospered until they did not. So come on down, lend me your ears treat yourself. As today on Becodering, we ask, what happened to the catchphrase? At the end of your first year, discover credit cards automatically double all the cashback that you've earned. That's right, everything you earned doubled.
All the cashback from eating at your favorite soup dumpling restaurant doubled. All the cashback from that trip where you sort of learned a snowboard. Also doubled. And the best part, you don't have to do anything ridiculous to get it. Nope, discover does it automatically. Seriously though, see terms and check it out for yourself at discover.com slash match. Once you start noticing catchphrases, it's hard to stop. That's what she said.
She's got Austin Powers catchphrases and a smithura catchphrases that are still in 2023 year of our Lord still being said by people which is wild. Sean Green is a graphic designer and podcaster and he has a nickname. I go by Bingo. I gave it to myself which is tacky, but I am Bingo. Bingo is also a listener and he wrote to us because he was curious about the catchphrases whole deal. I love sitcoms more than any other art form.
It's my favorite art form and I know that it's hoki and saccharine and plastic and cheesy. I like when sitcoms jump the shark and get even worse. And one of the things that are in sitcoms so so much are catchphrases. I know right. You got it dude. But it's not just sitcoms. There are also the big mainstream movie comedies. Bingo mentioned earlier. One million dollars. Already that. My wife. And there are other super well-known phrases that don't come from films or TV shows.
Where I work is people again in this year are saying who let the dogs out as a as like a sort of a catchphrase. It can get so much bigger like political slogans. Are they catchphrases? What about advertising slogans? With it. What? Are they catchphrases? I don't think it counts. It's selling an idea, selling a brand, selling a call to action to a certain degree. Whereas did I do that? I do that. It's just being like, oh, Erkel said that thing and everyone's like really happy about it.
Bingo is referring to Steve Erkel, the nerdy catchphrase-bouting star of the 1990s sitcom Family Matters. And Bingo actually has a theory about Erkel that we're going to get to later. But before that, we need to start with when the modern catchphrase caught on. People have been repeating pithy phrases to one another for a very long time. This is the basis of epic poetry and many religious rituals. Shakespeare was as quotable then as he is now and Vodvillex relied on catchphrases too.
But we're going to begin when mass audiences could hear these phrases simultaneously for the first time. J.E.L.L.L.O.L.O. The Jell-O program starring Jack Benny with Merry Living. Where are their catchphrases in radio shows like in the old and radio days? Of course, there were catchphrases on radio in old and days. Susan Douglas is a professor of media and communication at the University of Michigan and the author of Listening In, Radio and the American Imagination.
Remember, this is a medium that denies sight to its audience. So voice and language matters totally. Henry Audrey, coming mother. And those voices were reaching people on an unprecedented scale. Radio was such a phenomenon by the late 1920s and early 30s. You have 40 million people sometimes listening to the same thing simultaneously. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Amos and Andy Show. Amos and Andy was a signature program from the early radio era.
It featured the voices of two white actors playing Black men who had migrated from the south to the north. It has not aged well. It was a combination sitcom and minstrel show. Not unproblematic, but also hugely popular. Susan says when Amos and Andy came on the radio, people stopped everything to listen. If you were in the movie theater, the movie theater had to shut the film down for 15 minutes. Toilets remained unflushed. Taxis remained unhailed. And we still know some of its catchphrases.
Everybody starts saying, holy macro. Holy macro to see your card now. And there are other phrases from early radio that are also still with us. Ah, don't touch that style because there's nothing else on it. I don't know. Now cut that off. Growing up, I knew all of these phrases, not because they were alive in the early days of radio, but because they'd survived into my own childhood. A version of Jack Benny's now cut that out. Even made it onto my favorite sitcom and elementary school.
The late 80s, early 90s, full house. Cut it out. But for all the catchphrases that have lingered, there are more that have not. A lesser known comedian was a guy named Joe Penner, who was a huge hit on radio. And Joe Penner knew how to use his voice really well. He would just slide it up and down. You nasty man. You nasty man. Became a huge catchphrase. Here's the ears one that is completely inexplicable. You want to buy a duck? Why? Who knows. Another one was don't ever do that.
Don't ever do that. Those all became catchphrases in the early 1930s. Remember, there would have been something novel about just how many people knew these phrases. And that was something radio performers used to their advantage. There's a repetition, and then there becomes a knowingness to the repetition, because the person uttering the catchphrase now knows it's become a catchphrase. And so they use it even more to emphasize wink-wink to the audience that it is a catchphrase.
And it pulls audiences in. It makes them feel like they're part of this imagined community. You know, that was a power that radio had that broadvill or broadway simply didn't. Television had that same power. And as commercial TV took off in the 1950s, radio shows and stars flocked to it. And the catchphrase came with them. Now you could see a catchphrase on a show like the honeymooners. You want the world of the maras? Want the world of the maras? I'll give you the world of the maras.
You're going in a boom! Or on the George Burns and Gracie Allen show. Say goodnight, Gracie. Goodnight. Goodnight. In the 1960s, Batman's sidekick, Robin varied his catchphrase every time he said it. Holy magician, holy alphabet, holy ball and chain, holy fruit salad. And the variety sketch show Rowan and Martin's laughing varied who's seven. It suck it to me, time. Suck it to me, suck it to me, suck it to me, suck it to me. Suck it to yourself, suck it to me, honey.
Laughing was the number one show in America from 1968 to 1970. Its title was a riff on Beans and Lovens and it was aimed at a young audience. It had political jokes and groovy psychedelic sets and it popularized the phrase, Socketumi, which was said by cast members and guest stars, including Sammy Davis Jr., Milton Burrell and in a particularly memorable cameo from 1968, then presidential candidate Richard Nixon. Suck it to me.
Unlaffin, the catchphrase was cool and the Nixon campaign wanted some of that. And laughing wasn't the only hit variety show in which the catchphrase abounded. Laughing for New York at Saturday Night. Saturday Night Live debuted in 1975, subversive, counter-cultural and loaded with quotable sayings. Cheeseburger cheeseburger cheeseburger, for Pepsi to cheese. Cheeseburger cheeseburger, for Pepsi to cheese.
In short order, SNL's live studio audience was waiting in anticipation for familiar characters to deliver their familiar lines. We are to Wild and Krzegar! And the same friendsy also greeted the most popular character on TV. How come you don't get to pay anything? How come? Because I'm the Fonz! The Fonz, also known as Fonzzi, also known as Arsar Fonzarelli, was the leather jacket wearing star of the sitcom Happy Days, though that hadn't been the creator's intention.
When we first started Happy Days, Fonzzi was not an important character. Bill Bickley has been a television producer and writer for 53 years, and he was a showrunner on the early seasons of Happy Days. He showed up very little in some of the early episodes, because it wasn't really about Fonzzi at all. Instead, the show, which premiered in 1974, though it was set in the 1950s, was supposed to be about a family.
But audiences took a liking to Fonzzi, who was played by Henry Winkler, and the writers noticed. By its second season, Happy Days had reoriented around the Fonz and become a huge hit. And in just about every episode, Fonzzi would say, Heeeeeee! This wasn't the only thing the Fonz repeated. He would also flash a thumbs up, mesmerize women with a snap of his fingers, and he could start a jukebox just by banging it with his fist.
One time, he even got all the animals in a suburban backyard to quiet down. I'm calling it! That was taken way too far. Hey, the thumbs up. Those things started to get repeated, and it really got boring.
It seems worse mentioning here that the term Jump the Shark, which is now regularly used to describe when a show stops being good anymore, was coined in the mid-1980s in reference to a Happy Days episode in which the Fonz waterskies over a shark, while wearing a tiny bathing suit and his leather jacket. In the 1980s, the catchphrase itself was jumping to shark, shedding its cool, whilst staying extremely popular.
And no one captured these highs and lows quite like the decades most catchphrase-laden breakout character. When we come back... I'm got me cheese! I want you to picture Beyoncé practicing dance moves in her childhood bedroom. Steve Jobs tinkering with a computer in his garage. Every big moment starts with a big dream, but what happens when that big dream turns out to be an even bigger failure.
Each week on Wonder Woman's new podcast, The Big Flop, host Misha Brown is joined by different comedians to chronicle some of the biggest failures and blunders in pop culture history. From box office flops like Cats the Movie, to Action Park, New Jersey's infamous theme park that had countless injuries, many lawsuits, and ride so wild it became known as Class Action Park. Or Spider-Man, Turn Off The Dark, one of the biggest flops in Broadway history.
Spider-Man were dropping into pits, getting hit in the head with carabiners, and dangling from the ceiling like Pinyotes. It was a mess. Enjoy the Big Flop on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to the Big Flop early and add free on Wondery Plus. Get started with your free trial at Wondery.com slash plus. Apple Card is the perfect credit card for every purchase. It has cashback rewards unlike others.
You earn unlimited daily cashback on every purchase, receive it daily, and can grow it at 4.15% annual percentage yield when you open a high yield savings account. Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app on iPhone and start earning and growing your daily cash with savings today. Apple Card Subject to Credit Approval. Savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility requirements. Savings accounts provided by Goldman Sachs Bank USA.
Member FDIC, Terms Apply. Hi. Just as you rely on us to get to the bottom of mysteries, you may never have noticed or mysteries. We rely on you to power our investigations and keep the show going. And the best way to support us is by joining Slate Plus. Slate Membership Program. When you sign up for Slate Plus, you'll never have to hear another ad on Decodering or any other Slate podcast again. You'll get free and total access to Slate's website.
And you'll get to hear bonus episodes of Decodering, Slow Burn, and other Slate shows. So I hope you'll join if you can. It really makes a difference. To sign up now, please go to Slate.com slash decoder plus. Again, that's Slate.com slash decoder plus. Thank you. Now back to the show. So I have to confess that despite my brain being jammed with catchphrases, I never really thought about them until we got that email from the listener you heard from earlier. I go by Bingo.
Bingo wrote to us with an observation about one sitcom character in particular. I haven't done the full science on this, right? Because I have a full-time job. But I do believe that Steve Q. Irkall from the hit show Family Matters has the most catchphrases of any fictional character ever created. Steve Irkall was a nerdy, sweet, black kid with glasses, suspenders, and his pants hiked up to his chest. And he was the star of the sitcom Family Matters.
He was played by Jaliyal White and Bingo's right. Irkall does have a lot of catchphrases. Well, the classic is, of course. Did I do that? Did I do that? Did I do that? Did I do that? Don't, don't, don't, don't, Steve. Did I do that? That one is the most famous. But it's just the beginning. No sweat, my pet. Got me cheese. Do you love me? Don't you? What question, Dave? I'm falling, I can't get out. All told, Bingo counted 16 Irkall catchphrases.
And they are a great example of just how well these quips can work until they start to drive you up the wall. The story of Steve Irkall begins with a whole other series. The Cosby Show premiered in 1984 on NBC. It was about the Hux and affluent black family and it was not just a huge hit. It was a seismic cultural phenomenon. Soon, every TV network wanted a Cosby show of its own. The network actually came to us and said, could you do a black family?
That's Bill Bickley, the writer, producer you heard from earlier, who worked on Happy Days. He came back from Walsh's Übaso City in Vegas finally launched his first show of Airports War History. doing a black town show on Hollywood Coz. UCF Epic 80 ji yeah. character from that show, an elevator operator, gave her a police officer husband, added three kids, a grandmother, and aunt, and a house in Chicago, and the Winslow's were born.
When Family Matters premiered in 1989, it wasn't a flop, but it wasn't quite a hit either. The network wasn't happy with the ratings, and the writers were struggling to figure out the character's dynamics, and what the show was really about. Jolio White, who wasn't a part of the cast yet, actually remembers watching the show at home, and he could see it wasn't quite working. Like there was this moment when the aunt plops down into a chair. She's exhausted and she's like, oh, hey!
This is White in a 2021 interview with a rapper, Talib Kuali, on his People's Party podcast. They let that black woman come through the door and just say, oh, hey! And so there was a lot of moments like that, and why the show wasn't even so funny, because you had a white room writing for black people in Chicago. Midway through the first season, Bill Bickley and the show's other co-creator, neither of whom were
Jewish, by the way. They actually met at church. We're desperate for ideas, so they borrowed from themselves. Repurposing part of an unsuccessful pilot script, they'd written about a white family. It was like, okay, what if your father, meaning well, got you the worst possible date for your first dance? That was the idea. And the name of the kid who was the worst possible date? Steve Irkall. It was supposed to be a one episode part, but then Joliel White came in for the
audition. It's Joliel White that actually invented the character of Steve Irkall. This father was a dentist. He borrowed the glasses you wear to predict your eyes, and he hiked his pants up, and this kid blows us away. This kid is fantastic. So they signed a deal to make him a regular in a hurry. Irkall debuted in the 12th episode of Family Matters. Hi Laura. I hear you can't get a date for the dance. So you want to go with me?
Irkall immediately re-oriented the show. The largely white writing staff finally understood what the show should be about. It should be about Irkall. There was a kid who needed family and latched on to the winzlows, and all levels. That was the to me that didn't gave us a key for the series. Now we had that thing that could really drive the show. Now as far as my character is concerned, the thing that I always
love is Steve loved, cheese, polka, played the accordion. Everything about him was white and weird. Jaliyal white again. So it made him as a character easy to write for the writers. They were excited now. Like they were hyped. Finally, we got something we can write for. And then just, you know, now this is where I will tip my head a little bit. Just as a credit to myself, I would find a way to inject soul and a uniqueness. With Irkall in the cast,
the ratings started to climb. Jaliyal white single-handedly turned family matters into a top five hit as Irkall Mania swept the country. Irkall was on talk shows and award shows. Ladies and gentlemen, here is the reason that ABC's stocks are 12 points in the last quarter. He inspired an episode of The Simpsons in which Bart rockets to fame on the back of an Irkall-esque catchphrase. And meanwhile, Irkall's own catchphrase is kept coming.
Wow! Steve! I'm wearing you down, baby. I'm wearing you down! I don't have to take this. I'm going home. I'm going home. I'm going home. And a number of them even ended up being used for an Irkall doll. This was all familiar territory for family matters co-creator Bill Bickley. What had happened with Fonzie on Happy Days was happening all over again with Irkall. I've got to Steve Irkall doll over there. He keeps saying these things and hunts me.
Bill would actually cut Irkall's catchphrases out of scripts or try to bargain and say, do them twice, not three times. It was a losing battle. The network latches on to shit like this. It wasn't just the network though. I would laugh so hard. You know, when the laugh, there is like, you don't have any control over the laugh. It just comes out. Kenny Lucas is one half of the comedy duo The Lucas Brothers and he and his brother Keith
were around six or seven when Erkel Mania hit its peak. It was perfect timing for us. Oh yeah. If we had been a little older, I don't think we would have appreciated the silliness of Irkel. Irkel did get very silly. Over its 90s and run, family matters had Erkel clone himself. Get a swav doppelganger named Stefan Irkel and go to space. It was weird. The Lucas Brothers
own comedy can also be surreal and they count Erkel as an influence. They even did a sketch about him in 2014 spoofing the writers who faithfully retooled family matters. Okay. All right. Fine. If they want to cancel our show after 11 episodes, then I say, let's go down and flake. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wait. What y'all got in mind? Look, I was thinking right. What about a black nerd?
But there aren't black nerds. No, duh. That's the point, man. So when we add one to this TV show, it'll be so terrible every executive will lose their jobs to what? I'm curious what both as viewers of family matters, but also as comedians, you make of like the catch phrase. Oh, did I do that? I mean, iconic. And existential, you know, it's like, yeah, of course he did it. But it's like he still poses the question
and it hits every time. But like, like you think like you were watching like episode 163 and like that tail end of season eight. I hope you honest. I thought watching after season seven. I mean, it's ridiculous. After a while, yeah, you're like, all right, the catch phrase isn't isn't working anymore. For some, it had never worked. I just didn't like Erkel. William Evans is a writer and also the co-creator of the website and book black nerd problems.
When there are a few at the time, when you see these images of yourself in media, there kind of is this instant, you know, am I like this person? Do I know someone like this person kind of a thing? And I just remember watching that like, don't know if I know who this is. Like, who what? Why am I dealing with Erkel? Erkel's peak popularity came in the early 1990s when gangster rap was on the radio and the LA riots were in the news. And William thinks that
is something to do with a character's appeal. I think Erkel in itself, becoming so popular, was really indicative of how thirsty folks were to see a black caricature that was not threatening, that was quote unquote, cute and adorable. No, sweet, my pet. Even with all his quams, you should know William sometimes watched family matters. It was inescapable. Though less and less as it went on. Yeah, I got to a point where I was like, I'm good. I'm good.
By the time family matters ended in 1998 after 215 episodes, Joliel White was pretty sick of it too. He is much more measured about it now, but he once said to a reporter, if you ever see me do that character again, take me out and put a bullet in my head. The catchphrase had helped make Erkel, but now everyone just wanted to get as far from the character and his quips as possible. When we come back, that feeling about catchphrases carries into the new millennium.
Hey everybody, it's Tim Heidecker. You know me, Tim and Eric Bridesmaid's in the fantastic four. I'd like to personally invite you to listen to office hours live with me and my cohosts DJ Doug Pound. Hello. And Vic Berger. Howdy. Every week we bring you laugh fun games and lots of other surprises. It's live. We take your Zoom calls. We love having fun. Excuse me. My song's Vic said something. You're so long. Music. I like having fun. I like to laugh.
I like to meet people who can make me laugh. Please subscribe. No. I'm Josh Levine, the host of Slate's podcast one year. In our new season, we're firing up our flux capacitors and taking you way back. 1955. 1955. We'll bring you 1955's weirdest, wildest, and most captivating stories. You'll learn about forgotten pioneers like the TV weather girls who took the country by storm. Acute sexy young woman, well-spirited feeling that I can quite
understand why. And you'll discover moments from the past that resonate deeply with the present. Like how a bizarre conspiracy theory infected the nation's politics. Oh my god, they're trying to establish a prison camp. This is going to be Siberia USA. One year, 1955, out now, wherever you listen. In 2011, Saturday Night Live air a sketch called the original Kings of Catchphrase comedy. The four Kings of Catchphrase are back and they're going absolutely crazy.
The segment skewered stand up comedians who rely on the catchphrase. Oh, thank you, boy. There are other catchphrases including Slapy-Pappy Wang Wang and a comedian who uses someone else's catchphrase. This was not 2011's most successful SNL sketch, but it seems close to the heart of the comedians who made it and it would get two follow-ups. Saturday Night Live, the show that had and continues to give the world a disproportionate number of catchphrases
was making fun of them as something hokey and hacky. Former SNL head writer Tina Fey teased them too on her show 30 Rock when her character Liz Lemon greedily comes up with a catchphrase of her own. Long distance is the wrong distance Sue. Deal breaker. Mickey Bork wants to take me camping. Deal breaker Jenna. God. And I haven't seen my fiance in seven months. Sorry, I have two words for you. Robot warning. Okay, that catchphrase needs a little work. Deal breaker.
Sitcoms, especially the traditional multi-camera ones who stock and trade was the catchphrase, were increasingly seen as old-fashioned. Even as the form, along with the big studio comedy, was falling on hard times. The audiences for these tried and true catchphrase delivery systems were fragmenting and they were reaching fewer people than before. Catchphrases do sometimes still come from scripted entertainment. This is the way. This is the way. Maybe arms be ever in your
favor. Winter is coming. Cool, cool, cool. But comedies in particular supply them far less often than they used to. And if you think that means we've stopped saying the same things, that's not quite right either. A couple of years ago, some pictures of a whiteboard crammed with writing started making their way around the internet. The board is like a three by four whiteboard, just listing
every line that you've heard repeated for the last 20 years. Andres Holm is an actor, writer and co-creator of the comedy Workaholics about a group of friends who work and live together. It ran for seven seasons on Comedy Central and the whiteboard is a creation of its writer's room. I think we had planned to do a teaser that was going to be exclusively these jokes. And it was going to be like a two minute machine gun of nailed it. He's right behind me, isn't he?
I didn't not fart. Are you having a stroke? Why are you whispering? Random! Zero fox giving! I just peed a little. I think I just peed a little. I think I just peed a little. Like all the ones that we know and they're good and we hear the first time you go, whoa, she threw up in her mouth a little bit, hilarious visual. But then when like it's been 10 years and somebody at Target says that to you after they like hold up a bag of rotten apples or whatever,
then you go, did they know that's from Dodgeball? As if we should date sometime, you know, socially. Go out and kick it. Are you okay? I'm fine. I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. The famous catchphrases of the past tended to be closely associated with the people flogging them, a comedian, a character, a comedy that repeated them over and over. But now they're often untethered, which actually makes them easier for other professionals to use. The workaholics team
didn't end up making that teaser, but they kept compiling these kinds of jokes. Eventually they had so many they had to start a second whiteboard, over a hundred. And to be clear, it's not exactly that Anders and the other writers dislike these phrases. They just have a sense of professional pride when it comes to using these jokes in their own show. They are funny, but they're not surprising anymore, right? And surprise is part of comedy. When we meet somebody new, like a new actor,
and we kind of never seen their sensibility before, it's like shocking how funny they are. And then after a while, you kind of aren't surprised anymore. I'm realizing I'm like a personality type now and maybe not a good one, but I'm like, yeah, I remember like going out of my way in college to not say, I know right. Dude, that was crazy. I know, right? And I was like, why are we all saying this
now? I have to stop saying this. As befitting someone who pays this much attention to language, Anders and the other writers wanted to come up with catch phrases of their own. We were like, let's see what's like the craziest thing we could say and see if like people will start saying it on the street. That my friend is totally loose butthole. Excuse me, this entire outfit is completely tight butthole. We started saying tight butthole.
Out of like an experiment. And tight butthole wasn't the only line that got picked up. That's from when Adam and Blake went to go see weird owl at the O.C. fair and started a chance. Let's get weird. The National Hockey League decided to use it for a promotional campaign one season. And we were like, huh? Oh, okay. Great. This line had a very specific origin but it could work in a much more general way for a major sports league. It had become the kind of punchline
that could go on the whiteboard. In 2023, there are still catch phrases we all use to communicate and some of them are even very closely associated with the people who originally said them. But there are even more that come from just somewhere. Maybe it's a TV comedy, a commercial or some other legacy media. But it's just as likely they're from a meme, a tweet, a tick-tock, a YouTube video, an influencer or some random viral moment. And often it's hard to tell where they began at all.
What you can tell is that all of a sudden it feels like something lots of people are saying. Maybe too many. Your relatives are saying it. Strangers too. People at work. And it's in your own mouth. Or maybe you've only ever written it in a group chat or shared it as a gift on social media. And the reason for using these phrases, these modern cliches, is the same as it ever was. It brings people together. It is literally language that we share. However unoriginal it has become.
And we've found a way to keep sharing this kind of language even as the way we receive it has changed. It's actually kind of resourceful of us. We may not know exactly where these lines come from, but we'll take our catchphrases. In the sense of community they create. Anywhere we can get them. This is Dakota Ring. I'm Willa Paskin. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, you can email us at decoderringatslate.com. This episode was written by me, Willa Paskin.
I produced Dakota Ring with Katie Shepherd. This episode was edited by Joel Meyer. Derek John is late executive producer of Narrative Podcasts and Narrate Jacob is our senior technical director. Thank you to Stephen Langford, Doug Deetzalk, and the good, the bad, and the sequel podcast, and to Sean Green for the suggestion and the Erkel clips. I'd also like to thank all the Slate staffers who helped us brainstorm catchphrases.
I mentioned Slate Plus earlier in this episode. Please sign up. Members will get an upcoming bonus episode about how this season was made. We'll also talk about one more un-thethered catchphrase with Slate writer Luke Winky. The ubiquitous, let's go. And you should go to Slate.com slash decoder plus to sign up now. If you haven't yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or ever you get your podcasts and even better tell your friends. That's it for this
season. We'll be back in October. Until then, thanks for listening. Imagine a world where health means more than going to the doctor's office. It's why we created a health insurance company that considers so much more. Well-point. Your whole health is our whole point.