Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts. We had extra production from Patrick Fort and editing help from Joel Meyer. It was edited by Willa Paskin, who produces Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd. This episode was written by Henry Grabar, author of Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World. We’ll explore how parking has quietly damaged the American landscape-and see what might fix it. In this episode, we’re going to hunt for parking, from the mean streets of Brooklyn to the sandy lots of Florida. It turns out our quest for parking has made some of our biggest problems worse. Slate’s Henry Grabar has spent the last few years investigating how our pathological need for car storage determines the look, feel, and function of the places we live.

On the other, it seems like it’s never enough. On the one hand, we have paved an ungodly amount of land to park our cars. Parking is one of the great paradoxes of American life. Go to to join Slate Plus today.ĭecoder Ring is now available on YouTube. You’ll be able to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads-and your support is crucial to our work. If you’re a fan of the show, sign up for Slate Plus. If you haven’t please yet, subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Much of Wells’ work is out of print, but you can find one of her pieces in a collection called The Good People: New Fairylore Essays. Also, a big tip of the hat to Rosemary Wells, the dental school instructor who in the 1970s began exploring the Tooth Fairy’s, ahem, roots. Thank you to Charles Duan, Jim Piddock, Purva Merchant, Hannah Morris, Laurie Leahy, Torie Bosch, and Rebecca Onion. This episode was edited by Jamie York. Derek John is Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts. This podcast was written by Willa Paskin, who produces Decoder Ring with Katie Shepherd. In this episode, with the help of Tinkerbell, Santa Claus, and some savvy humans who are trying to exploit this strange creature’s untapped intellectual property, we’ll explore the origins of this childhood ritual, its durability-and its remarkable resistance to commercialization. This flying piece of folklore is alive and well in the 21st century, handed down to kids in whatever way their parents see fit.

We pride ourselves on being grounded, rational beings, but flitting amongst us is a mystery: the Tooth Fairy.

Heather radke author