Design is everywhere in our lives, perhaps most importantly in the places where we've just stopped noticing. 99% Invisible is a weekly exploration of the process and power of design and architecture. From award winning producer Roman Mars. Learn more at 99percentinvisible.org.

99% Invisible

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

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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100 Objects #16: Wheel of Fortune Dalmatian

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

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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100 Objects #15: Bundy Clock

Spolia, from a Liverpool neighborhood to ancient Rome.
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Spolia

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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100 Objects #14: Basketball Sleeve

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

This episode is sponsored by Claude. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at Claude.ai.
On his deathbed, President Chester Arthur ordered that all of his personal and professional papers be burned. Three barrels of documents went up in flames. But 23 letters survived, initialed only "J.I.S." Comedian Elliott Kalan joins Roman Mars to tell the story of how a politician who owed so much to a corrupt government system became the one to dismantle it, thanks to one woman: Julia Isabella Sand. It’s the story of how a woman no one had ever heard of helped transform a president few remember, and in the process created the American government as we know it.
A History of the United States in 100 Objects is a production of 99% Invisible and BBC Studios.
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100 Objects #13: The Sand Letters

A devastating fire put one of Hong Kong's oldest building traditions on trial, but the real story runs much deeper.
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Bamboo Is Innocent

In 1821, two Rhode Island brothers went looking for buyers for their woolen fabric, and stumbled into a lucrative, captive market: Southern slave plantations. Roman Mars and historian Seth Rockman trace the strange life of so-called "Negro cloth" — a textile category defined by nothing but who it was worn by. Along the way, they uncover how enslaved people shaped the very cloth used to control them, and how New England manufacturers convinced themselves they were the good guys.
A History of the United States in 100 Objects is a production of 99% Invisible and BBC Studios.
Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and a whole week early. 
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 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.