Weird Sports, White Elephants, and When Doves Cry

Featuring Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, and covering the second half of Part 5 and the first section of Part... more

Decades ago, the city of Los Angeles buried its natural river in concrete and turned it into infrastructure. And understanding... more

One intrepid reporter travels to Germany to witness a chord change for an organ concert designed to last 639 years,... more

It’s hard to overstate the vastness of the Skid Row neighborhood in Los Angeles. It spans roughly 50 blocks, which... more

Nearly 10 years after the launch of the JUUL, Backfired: The Vaping Wars asks: Could e-cigarettes have been the solution... more

Featuring television producer, writer, director, and actor Mike Schur, and covering the first half of Part 5, chapters 25-26.

In the 55 years since the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale was created to warn us about hurricanes, hurricanes have become... more

The leaf blower is one of the most hated objects in the modern world, but the reality of banning them... more

Whose job is it to fact check the Supreme Court? As it turns out, no one. So why is it... more

Squirrels were purposefully introduced into our cities in the 1800s, and when their population exploded, we lost track of how... more

Roman talks to Jake Berman, author of "The Lost Subways of North America."

Featuring Brandy Zadrozny, senior reporter for NBC News who covers misinformation, conspiracy theories, and the internet, and covering the last... more

Where's my jetpack?

How an ugly puppet created television as we know it.

In this bonus episode, Lasha talks about extra reporting she did for Towers of Silence on the current state of... more

Our pal Gillian Jacobs takes us through the history of poison control and the yucky face meant to warn children... more

How the loss of vultures in India has put an ancient burial tradition in crisis.

Featuring the U.S. representative for New York's 14th congressional district, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and covering the second section of Part 4,... more

Dan Pashman embarks on an epic trip across Italy in search of lesser-known pasta dishes — and to learn about... more

Bright, flamboyant central African fashion

The history of the chambre de bonne, the tiny French apartment type that may be, finally, on the way out.

A 99pi guide to some of our favorite design features of Athens, Georgia.

How to accommodate autism in the built world

The garbage disposer and the dream of a garbage-free city

Featuring Blank Check co-host and The Atlantic movie critic David Sims covering the first section of Part 4, chapters 11-15.

The constant and sometimes fraught back and forth between cartoons and toys, as exemplified by Transformers and the Teenage Mutant... more

Understanding the clunky Prop 65 warnings on products

A 99pi guide to some of our favorite design features of Santa Fe.

Since the mid-1970s, almost every jazz musician has owned a copy of the same book and originally it was a... more

It’s been said that history is written by the person at the typewriter. But who did the person who made... more

How much film and television shapes us as individuals and as a society, far beyond what we give it credit... more

Featuring New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, covering Part 3, chapters 6-10.

How White Castle invented fast food

The interblock parks of Sofia, Bulgaria that are caught between old failed communism and new hyper capitalism

There are memorials to lost fishermen, lost astronauts, even lost members of Lynyrd Skynyrd. What should a COVID pandemic memorial... more

A 99pi guide to some of our favorite design features of Chicago

The design evolution of the seemingly simple, but not all that simple, skateboard

Featuring author Robert Caro covering The Introduction, Part 1, and Part 2 (intro through chapter 5).

The fake villages and role players used to train US soldiers

Upside-down construction, the linguistics of filler, and a fire that has been burning...and will burn... for decades.

Mapping the long history of Slovenia onto the three "Santas' that visit each year

We have a year-end mix of short stories about a rogue architect, spooky kitchens, a hundred year old music streaming... more

The storied evolution of pocket calculation

Roman Mars and Elliott Kalan are starting The Power Broker book club that will run through all of 2024 as... more

The tradition of the Tomb of the Unknown goes back only about a century, but it has become one of... more

A band that was never meant to be recorded and a personal recorder that was never designed to capture music... more

A town's fight to be free from the noise and trauma of the Cincinnati Police Department's open-air gun range

How Reno became the go-to place to get a quick divorce and how divorce laws have changed over time

The hunt to cultivate the cure for malaria

Designing environments for people with dementia

Devo’s first record and the fight over the arresting image of a flashy, handsome golf legend on the cover.

The historic vote over which version of Elvis should be immortalized on a postage stamp

Over its more than 40 year journey from conception to completion, Boston’s Big Dig massive infrastructure project, which rerouted the... more

Two stories where the devil is in the details

The triumph and tragedy of the Sydney Opera House

Who were the real Luddites?

The story of how "Who Let The Dogs Out" ended up stuck in all of our brains. A story that... more

Solving the housing crisis and the office vacancy crisis with one obvious and elegant idea: office to housing conversion. If... more

The story of a voice training VHS tape that helped trans women at a time when other resources were hard... more

More about the trails as an object and an idea

We take the humble trail, what might be the original designed object, and deconstruct it

The decades-long campaign to get us to love our gas stoves

Andrew Leland takes us through the fascinating history of alternative reading technologies designed for blind people and discusses his fantastic... more

La Sombrita and the politics of shade

The ubiquity and cultural legacy of the shocking little Christian comics books called Chick Tracts

Proximity founder Ryan Coogler talks all about podcasts with Roman Mars

Composer Raymond Scott’s lifelong quest to build an automatic songwriting machine, and what it means for our own AI-addled, ChatGPT... more

Many consider Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky's Frankfurt Kitchen to be nothing less than the first modern kitchen.

The pregones of Mexico City and the one call that stands out from the cacophony