The Secret Life of Lawn Ornaments
Lawn ornaments are everywhere—but for something so ubiquitous, they’re also mysterious. What’s the person with the flamingo or the gargoyle in their yard trying to say—and why do they want to say it s...
17 Juli 202444min
Stuffed Animals Gone Wild
Axolotls. Narwhals. Llamas. Sloths. Every few years, it seems like American kids and parents collectively decide they cannot get enough of a creature that makes teddy bears seem impossibly quaint. In ...
3 Juli 202436min
Sex, Lies, and Hockey Pucks
30 years ago, the Stanley Cup playoffs ignited a rumor that has been messing with Jane Macdougall’s life ever since. In 1994, the Vancouver Canucks had made it all the way to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup...
19 Juni 202433min
Captain Planet to the Rescue
In 1990, the cartoon superhero Captain Planet swooped onto TV screens all over the world. He was the brainchild of media mogul Ted Turner, and in the face of impending ecological catastrophe, he had t...
5 Juni 202439min
Why Are We Still Using Fat Suits?
A fat suit is a custom-made costume with one goal: to make an actor appear fat without them actually having to be fat. It’s typically a unitard filled with mattress foam and other wiggly, jiggly bits—...
22 Maj 202432min
How the Jalapeño Lost Its Heat
The jalapeño is the workhorse of hot peppers. They’re sold fresh, canned, pickled, in hot sauces, salsas, smoked into chipotles, and they outsell all other hot peppers in the United States. These ever...
8 Maj 202429min
From ‘The Last Archive’: Building an Automatic Songwriting Machine
We’re bringing you an episode of The Last Archive from our friends at Pushkin Industries. In this episode: an exploration of early artificial intelligence, the story of the composer Raymond Scott’s li...
1 Maj 202453min
Making Real Music for a Fake Band
Pop culture is full of fictional bands singing songs purpose-made to capture a moment, a sound. This music doesn’t organically emerge from a scene or genre, hoping to find an audience. Instead it fulf...
24 Apr 202437min
