Thirty years ago, a new kind of soda arrived in select stores. Instead of crowing about how spectacular it was, it offered up a liquid shrug, a fizzy irony. OK Soda was an inside joke for people who k... View More

Hosted by Christina Cauterucci. Coming in May 2024. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices View More

The eerie similarity of coffee shops all over the world was so confounding to Kyle Chayka that it led him to write the new book Filterworld: How Algorithms Are Flattening Culture. In today’s episode, ... View More

Before 1990, there had never been a documented case of a patient getting HIV from a health care worker. Kimberly Bergalis changed that. Her claim that she’d been infected by her dentist would captivat... View More

Robert Mapplethorpe was one of the most famous photographers in the world—and one of the most controversial. When his work came to Cincinnati in 1990, it would be at the center of a vicious fight over... View More

In March 1990, a story broke that shocked the nation: George H.W. Bush had banned broccoli from Air Force One. The frenzy that came next would change the fate of a vegetable—and maybe even alter the c... View More

A middle-aged single dad in Chicago was outraged by all the cigarette billboards popping up in Black communities. In 1990, he picked up a paint roller and became an anti-tobacco vigilante. And he did ... View More

Pizza Hut’s adventure in the Soviet Union was unlike any restaurant opening before or since. It involved a fleet of submarines, a very special pizza topped with tuna and salmon, and a casual dining sp... View More

In 1992, a Minnesota-based software company known for its educational hit The Oregon Trail released another simulation-style game to school districts across the country. Freedom! took kids on a journe... View More

From the moment it was released in 1995, The Rules was controversial.. Some people loved it—and swore that the dating manual’s throwback advice helped them land a husband. Others thought it was retrog... View More

We receive a lot of fantastic show ideas from our listeners—and we’re grateful for each and every one. For our latest mailbag episode, we’re tackling five of your questions, including “Why the hell do... View More

In the mid-1990s, the prime time drama Melrose Place became a home to hundreds of pieces of contemporary art—and no one noticed. In this episode, Isaac Butler tells the story of the artist collective ... View More

Judging from teen dramas on Netflix, the slow dance seems to be alive and well. But when you talk to actual teens, it’s clear this time-honored tradition is on life support. In this episode, we trace ... View More

Ten years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, 25 women who’d been disfigured by the blast came to the United States. Those Japanese survivors would go to the White House and end up on a bizarre pro... View More

Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine transformed America and the world in ways that seemed unimaginable. But in 1955, there was a moment when everything was in doubt. This week, Josh Levin talks with Dr. Paul O... View More

When Alaskans wanted their own mental-health facility, a rumor took hold all over America. This week, Evan Chung traces the origins of that far-right conspiracy theory: that the government was buildin... View More

In the early days of television, women struggled to find their place. In 1955, they got it: forecasting the weather, on stations all across the country. But as these “weather girls” transformed the ai... View More

In 1955, the frontiersman Davy Crockett became the most famous man in America, more than a century after his death at the Alamo. This week, Evan Chung dives into a cultural phenomenon nobody saw comin... View More

The Cannon Street All-Stars dreamed of playing in the 1955 Little League World Series. Their biggest obstacle didn’t come on the field. In the year that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a pub... View More

Once you start listening for catchphrases in everyday life—you can’t stop hearing them. From the radio era’s “Holy mackerel!” to Fonzie’s “Ayyy!” to Urkel’s multiple go-to lines on Family Matters, we ... View More