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Oyster-tecture
Episode 282
New York was built at the mouth of the Hudson River, and that fertile estuary environment was filled with all kinds of marine life. But one creature …
8 years, 10 months ago
La Sagrada Familia
Episode 281
There are a lot of Gothic churches in Spain, but this one is different. It doesn’t look like a Gothic cathedral. It looks organic, like it was built …
8 years, 10 months ago
Half Measures
Episode 280
The United States is one of just a handful of countries that that isn’t officially metric. Instead, Americans measure things our own way, in units th…
8 years, 11 months ago
The Containment Plan
Episode 279
It’s hard to overstate the vastness of the Skid Row neighborhood in Los Angeles. It spans roughly 50 blocks, which is about a fifth of the entire dow…
8 years, 11 months ago
The Athletic Brassiere
Episode 278
Among the most important advances in sports technology, few can compete with the invention of the sports bra. Following the passage of Title IX in 19…
8 years, 11 months ago
Ponte City Tower
Episode 277
Ponte City Tower, the brutalist cylindrical high-rise that towers over Johannesburg, has gone from a symbol of white opulence to something far more c…
8 years, 11 months ago
The Finnish Experiment
Episode 276
Around the world, there is a lot of buzz around the idea of universal basic income (also known as “unconditional basic income” or UBI). It can take d…
9 years ago
Coal Hogs Work Safe
Episode 275
Coal miner stickers started out as little advertisements that the manufacturers of mining equipment handed out. Even before the late 1960s, when mini…
9 years ago
The Age of the Algorithm
Episode 274
Computer algorithms now shape our world in profound and mostly invisible ways. They predict if we’ll be valuable customers and whether we’re likely t…
9 years ago
Notes on an Imagined Plaque
Episode 273
Monuments don’t just appear in the wake of someone’s death — they are erected for reasons specific to a time and place. In 1905, one such memorial wa…
9 years ago