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Strowger and Purple Reign Redux
Episode 90
If you are an undertaker in 1878 Kansas City, and you learn that your competitor’s wife works as a telephone switchboard operator and has been divert…
12 years, 11 months ago
Bubble Houses
Episode 89
If you were a movie star in the market for a mansion in 1930s Los Angeles, there was a good chance you might call on Wallace Neff. Neff wasn’t just a…
13 years ago
The Broadcast Clock
Episode 88
There’s a term that epitomizes what we radio producers aspire to create: the “driveway moment.” It’s when a story is so good that you literally can’t…
13 years ago
I Heart NY, TM
Episode 87
By now, the story is well known. A man sits in the backseat of a cab, sketching on a notepad as night falls over a crumbling city. He scribbles the l…
13 years ago
Reversal of Fortune
Episode 86
In the mid-1800s, Chicago was growing like crazy, but it was also built on a swamp and struggling with a basic problem: sewage. Engineers raised the …
13 years, 1 month ago
Noble Effort
Episode 85
If you grew up watching Warner Brothers cartoons, you might remember seeing the name Chuck Jones in big letters in the opening credits. Chuck Jones d…
13 years, 1 month ago
Ode to Ladislav Sutnar plus Trading Places with Planet Money
Episode 84
An ode to an information designer who made life a little bit easier for millions and millions of people: Ladislav Sutnar, the man who put parentheses…
13 years, 2 months ago
Heyoon
Episode 83
Growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Alex Goldman was a misfit. Bored and disaffected and angry, he longed for a place to escape to. And then he found …
13 years, 2 months ago
The Man of Tomorrow
Episode 82
I’m willing to concede from the get-go that I might be wrong about the entire premise of this story, but Superman has never really worked for me as a…
13 years, 2 months ago
Rebar and the Alvord Lake Bridge
Episode 81
There’s something about rebar that fascinates me. If nothing else because there are very few things that invoke a fear of being skewered. My preoccup…
13 years, 3 months ago