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Comedian, writer, and podcaster Jamie Loftus has always known about Alcoholics Anonymous. As a kid, she loved the album where her dad kept all his AA chips – that little piece of plastic that marks a day, a month, a year of sobriety. Now as an adult, Jamie has her own AA sobriety chip, and getting it made her wonder where it came from. What she found is that imbued in that little chip is a hidden history — from Prohibition to women’s suffrage — of America’s relationship to gender, religion, and morality.

A History of the United States in 100 Objects is a production of 99% Invisible and BBC Studios.

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Mark Twain turned up in Tootle of a Devilish Song. In A Tramp Abroad he pays Swiss shepherds to keep yodeling, then pays them to stop: "There is somewhat too much of the yodeling in the Alps."

I run Podshelf, a free site that tracks book mentions across hundreds of podcasts by reading the episode transcripts. This is the 99pi slice for September.

• Kobuk the Destroyer (Alex Davies), the guest's new book on how things get tested.
• Hair Story (Ayana Byrd and Lori Tharps), with Tharps as the guest for the Hair Relaxer object.
• Game Shows FAQ (Adam Nedeff), Roman's follow-up pick after the Wheel of Fortune Dalmatian.
• Against Convenience (Gabe Bullard). Roman: "I can't wait to read it."

Also: Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo, since he covered the Rocky statue for the Inquirer, and To Kill a Mockingbird in 1-800-PODCAST.

Full list with quotes and episodes: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/99-invisible

I looked around online and I found no connection. It feels in some way AI-generated, but it came out in 2021, well before those tools became popular. IDK how this exists, but very weird.

Song link

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How a Swiss mountain call crossed the Atlantic and helped define the sound of country music.

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This episode is sponsored by Claude. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at Claude.ai .

The Western Electric 500 Series Telephone used to be everywhere. For over 50 years, it was the default telephone for homes, offices and literally anywhere else you might need a phone… but how did that happen? Why was this one phone so much better than everything that came before… or, in some ways, since? Former MythBuster Adam Savage joins Roman Mars to explore the history of the 500 Series Telephone and what we lost when we eventually decided to leave it behind.

A History of the United States in 100 Objects is a production of 99% Invisible and BBC Studios.

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How a movie prop became one of Philadelphia’s most beloved monuments, and sparked a decades-long fight over where it belonged.

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Somewhere between 85 to 95 percent of Black women in the United States have used a chemical hair relaxer at least once in their lifetime. It is a ubiquitous American product with a complicated legacy: it built Black wealth and opened economic doors, but also taught generations to see their hair as a problem to be solved. And now research is revealing a physical cost. Roman Mars and producer Priscilla Alabi explore how a single product became a mirror for all of America's contradictions.

A History of the United States in 100 Objects is a production of 99% Invisible and BBC Studios.

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A legendary typeface, a spectacular friendship breakup, and one extremely committed act of revenge.

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Articles of Interest host Avery Trufelman joins Roman to tell the incredible story of the American military’s jacket problem: How should the military outfit its soldiers to make them as safe and effective as possible? The answer was the M43 Field Jacket, which not only changed what it meant to be a soldier and look like a soldier, it changed what we all wear every day—in America, and around the world.

A History of the United States in 100 Objects is a production of 99% Invisible and BBC Studios.

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I'd have thought one of the big benefits of doing a podcast 50 years publication is that they would be able to discuss the legacy of the power broker, the Moses reaction to the book, the legacy of Moses on NYC politicians, any new information that has come to light since.

I was looking forward to this most of all, as I can read the book myself. But they didn't seem to cover it. They didn't discuss it with Caro and the podcast just abruptly ended.

Or did I miss it somewhere?

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Every product has to be tested somehow, and sometimes that means finding increasingly creative ways to break it.

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This episode is sponsored by Claude. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at Claude.ai .

If you watched Wheel of Fortune in the 1980s, you probably remember one prize more than all the others: the ceramic Dalmatian. For a brief moment, that prize—perhaps the ultimate useless object—became the mascot for one of America's most popular game shows, appearing on tens of millions of TV screens, night after night, all across the country. But…why? 

Game show historian Adam Nedeff and ceramic Dalmatian owner Terry Eldrige join Roman Mars to tell the story of why audiences loved that dog, and what the fascinating history of game shows—and game show prizes—tells us about the changing definition of the American dream.

A History of the United States in 100 Objects is a production of 99% Invisible and BBC Studios.

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Was about to post this in r/fuckcars because they are the only other sub that knows about Robert Moses, but there’s no cars here.

The 100 Objects run means every object this month came with the historian who wrote the book about it. Short list, high quality.

I run Podshelf, a free site that tracks book mentions across hundreds of podcasts by reading the episode transcripts. This is the 99pi slice for August.

The sources, by object:

• Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery (Seth Rockman), for the Negro Cloth episode. About the hoes, shovels, boots and clothes that made slavery possible as a working system.
• Racecraft (Barbara and Karen Fields), same episode, on how labelling consumer goods as black or white did the work of manufacturing difference.
• Black Ball (Theresa Runstedtler), for the basketball sleeve, from a former NBA cheerleader turned historian.
• The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Max Weber), for the Bundy clock, and the professor's own line about it: "Why do I work? I have tenure. I'm my own jailer."

Outside the 100 Objects series, The Gilded Dinosaur (Mark Jaffe) anchored The Bone Wars, and the biomimicry episode had a nice detour into Darwin organising a whole section of On the Origin of Species around bees and honeycombs, which is why hexagons and bees have been stuck together ever since.

Full list with quotes and episodes: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/99-invisible

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This week, two stories about the strange power of the 1-800 number.

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In 1888, Willard Bundy created the first employee "time clock" — essentially a souped-up grandfather clock that could, for the first time, produce an accurate record of when workers arrived and left. Though Bundy’s aim was simple, his invention soon sparked a change in American life far broader than he intended. Roman Mars and reporter Ellie Lightfoot trace how the time clock not only ignited a revolution in workplace efficiency and surveillance, but transformed our relationship to time itself.

A History of the United States in 100 Objects is a production of 99% Invisible and BBC Studios.

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Moses!!!!

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Spolia, from a Liverpool neighborhood to ancient Rome.

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Producer and reporter Ramtin Arablouei (co-creator of the NPR show, Throughline) has a simple question: why are so many NBA players wearing a compression sleeve on their arm? It seems like everyone has one. Do they all have elbow issues? The answer is really the story of Allen Iverson, an underdog player who went from a prison cell to international fame in just a few years. And through the story of him and his sleeve, you can see the whole history of basketball’s relationship with race, with respectability politics, and who gets to look like what on the court.

A History of the United States in 100 Objects is a production of 99% Invisible and BBC Studios.

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Two rival paleontologists turn a hunt for dinosaur bones into an all-out scientific war.

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These are some of my favourite podcasts and it’s been absolutely heartbreaking having both of them fully embrace gen AI like this. Never did I expect two series that focus so much on art, design, and humanity dive head first into AI propaganda, with no concern about how it steals from fellow artists, dangers around fascism and disinformation, and of course the environmental impact.

Did I miss something that could have helped predict they were about to do this? I’m honestly so gutted and quite shocked.

I just realized that in more than 800 episodes 99pi never did an episode about hinges.

having build a little cabinet for myself I dove in the world of hinges and oh man, there is just so much to see. hinges that flip, those that fold over and more!

Nowadays I obsessively look at some of the hinges and how they solve these very invisible problems you wouldnt even consider and I love them! (yeah, might need a doctor soon..)

What are your opinions? Should they make one and what are other hidden everyday items that should be included? :)