Football helmets can prevent devastating injuries, but they may also help make an inherently violent game feel safer than it really is.

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A closer look at the messy, beautiful bricks hiding across Chicago.

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Comedian, writer, and podcaster Jamie Loftus has always known about Alcoholics Anonymous. As a kid, she loved the album where her dad kept all his AA chips – that little piece of plastic that marks a day, a month, a year of sobriety. Now as an adult, Jamie has her own AA sobriety chip, and getting it made her wonder where it came from. What she found is that imbued in that little chip is a hidden history — from Prohibition to women’s suffrage — of America’s relationship to gender, religion, and morality.

A History of the United States in 100 Objects is a production of 99% Invisible and BBC Studios.

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How a Swiss mountain call crossed the Atlantic and helped define the sound of country music.

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This episode is sponsored by Claude. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at Claude.ai.

The Western Electric 500 Series Telephone used to be everywhere. For over 50 years, it was the default telephone for homes, offices and literally anywhere else you might need a phone… but how did that happen? Why was this one phone so much better than everything that came before… or, in some ways, since? Former MythBuster Adam Savage joins Roman Mars to explore the history of the 500 Series Telephone and what we lost when we eventually decided to leave it behind.

A History of the United States in 100 Objects is a production of 99% Invisible and BBC Studios.

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How a movie prop became one of Philadelphia’s most beloved monuments, and sparked a decades-long fight over where it belonged.

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Somewhere between 85 to 95 percent of Black women in the United States have used a chemical hair relaxer at least once in their lifetime. It is a ubiquitous American product with a complicated legacy: it built Black wealth and opened economic doors, but also taught generations to see their hair as a problem to be solved. And now research is revealing a physical cost. Roman Mars and producer Priscilla Alabi explore how a single product became a mirror for all of America's contradictions.

A History of the United States in 100 Objects is a production of 99% Invisible and BBC Studios.

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A legendary typeface, a spectacular friendship breakup, and one extremely committed act of revenge.

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