We often tell stories about how people shape the built world, but on this milestone 500th episode, we're telling stories about how the built world has shaped us (with good history and facts thrown in, because we're us).
The history of taking plants that grow naturally in one place, and moving them halfway around the world to an entirely different place with a different, often inhospitable, climate-- and then keeping them alive by growing them in potting soil that we bought at Home Depot.
The Octagonal House fad and self-improvement in the 1800s
The story of a long, skinny island east of Russia's mainland and the ethnic Koreans who have had no choice but to call it home for decades.
Wild Rice has long played an important role in Ojibwe cultures, but last year, it took on a new role: plaintiff in a court case.
No teenager in America in the 1980s could avoid the gravitational pull of the mall, not even author Alexandra Lange. In her new book, Meet Me by the Fountain, Lange writes about how malls were conceptually born out of a lack of space for people to convene in American suburbs
Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag. At least, that's what we were taught in school. But when historians go searching…there’s no proof to be found.
Priceless cultural artifacts have been plundered and sold for hundreds of years. You can find these relics in museums and in private collections. In recent years, with the advent of online marketplaces, researchers have begun to find a lot of artifacts for sale on the web. And it turns out, ISIS profits from much of it.
The educational toys that changed the world
What zoning out middle-sized housing options does to a city