Adam Rogers has been thinking and writing about what’s known in the industry simply as "search." For the last decade, people have been grumbling about not being able to find things online, both in our private data and on the public web, despite ever-evolving algorithms. Ever since humans started writing stuff down, the struggle has been in how to organize it all so that its contents wouldn't be lost in the stacks. Search has always been an attempt to fix that problem. Search and Ye Might Find
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North Korea's state-run design studio has long been a prolific maker of statues around the world, particularly in Africa
The infrastructure, zoning, and cultural factors that make the hit Japanese TV program Old Enough, where toddlers go on errands by themselves, possible
There's a particular one-kilohertz tone that is universally understood to be covering up inappropriate words on radio and TV. But there are other options, too, like silence -- so why did this particular *bleep* sound become ubiquitous?
We're sharing the latest episode of Roman's other show What Roman Mars Can Learn About Con Law, your guide to the US Constitution and the Supreme Court.
For the love of peat
In the final episode of our vernacular spectacular anniversary series, 99pi producers and friends of the show will be sharing more stories of regional architecture–some close to home, some on remote islands– that capture our imagination and inspire us to look deeper.
The utilitarian and "ugly" architecture that is beautiful to us
We often tell stories about how people shape the built world, but on this milestone 500th episode, we're telling stories about how the built world has shaped us (with good history and facts thrown in, because we're us).
The history of taking plants that grow naturally in one place, and moving them halfway around the world to an entirely different place with a different, often inhospitable, climate-- and then keeping them alive by growing them in potting soil that we bought at Home Depot.
The Octagonal House fad and self-improvement in the 1800s
The story of a long, skinny island east of Russia's mainland and the ethnic Koreans who have had no choice but to call it home for decades.
Wild Rice has long played an important role in Ojibwe cultures, but last year, it took on a new role: plaintiff in a court case.
No teenager in America in the 1980s could avoid the gravitational pull of the mall, not even author Alexandra Lange. In her new book, Meet Me by the Fountain, Lange writes about how malls were conceptually born out of a lack of space for people to convene in American suburbs
Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag. At least, that's what we were taught in school. But when historians go searching…there’s no proof to be found.
Priceless cultural artifacts have been plundered and sold for hundreds of years. You can find these relics in museums and in private collections. In recent years, with the advent of online marketplaces, researchers have begun to find a lot of artifacts for sale on the web. And it turns out, …
The educational toys that changed the world
What zoning out middle-sized housing options does to a city
Some of the most ambitious, fascinating, and downright crazy trains that the world has ever seen.
Bonus episode: Roman Mars on Blank Check with Griffin and David talking about The Quick and The Dead (Sam Raimi, 1995)