Here's

Roman.

The book I'm going to tell you about was written by one very frustrated school teacher.

This guy is teaching in 1783.

The Revolutionary War is ending.

The fighting on American soil finally tapering off.

And in every part of regular life, people are trying to figure out, OK, now that we're not British anymore, what does it actually mean to be an American? This teacher, he's educating anywhere from 50 to 70 students in a one-room schoolhouse.

If

Can you spell out, though, w- what the consequences would be of not standardizing things like paving stones and glassware? Like, what are the examples of inefficiencies as a result of non-standardization?

Well, what ends up happening is you have to sort of custom do everything at a certain point.

So, like, if you have 11 paving stone sizes instead of 65 paving stone sizes, when something breaks or something needs to be replaced, now you can go to a shelf and sort of get to them, and having interchangeable parts does so much for you to increase the efficiency of any system.

And also, it's sort of like, you know, the United States, you know, we think of them as one body, but the different states had lots of different standards of things, and so just, like, a bushel of corn was more in one state than another, just in terms of weight.

There's, like, a, truck sizes were allowed in one state versus not allowed in another on a, on a road, and you just cannot have a national system of commerce if these different parts don't talk to each other.

And so he was really interested in making all that stuff smooth and standard and making kind of one nation out of our s- sort of system of commerce.

You know, this part of this soft power, a requirement is a government that functions and think, and thinks strategically.

Mm-hmm.

can you spell out though what the consequences would be of not standardizing things like paving stones and glassware like what are the examples of inefficiencies as a result of non-standardization

Well, what ends up happening is you have to sort of custom do everything at a certain point.

So like if you have 11 paving stone sizes instead of 65 paving stone sizes, when something breaks or something needs to be replaced, now you can go to a shelf and sort of get them.

And having interchangeable parts does so much for you to increase the efficiency of any system.

And also it's sort of like, You know, the United States, you know, we think of them as one body, but the different states had lots of different standards of things.

And so just like a bushel of corn was more in one state than another, just in terms of weight.

There's like a truck sizes were allowed in one state versus not allowed in another on a road.

There was a lot of people in

How interested would you say the US has been in its own history through the centuries?

These anniversaries make us reflect a little bit more and think about the future and think about our ideals.

It's not uncommon.

Like, I was a very little kid when the bicentennial happened, but the ripple effects, there was like artifacts left over of the bicentennial.

So it was a, it was a really big deal.

And we have this story that we-- the first episode of the series is about this thing called the century safe, which is this time capsule safe that was built in 1876, designed to be opened in 1976 by the president of the United States.

It was like- It was written on the safe, opened by the president of the United States 100 years later.

Judging from these objects, how far do you think America's been shaped by its own myths, its own storytelling, its own ideas and inventions, and how far is it by exchange, conflict, entanglement with the wider world?

Can you spell out, though, w- what the consequences would be of not standardizing things like paving stones and glassware? Like, what are the examples of inefficiencies as a result of non-standardization?

Well, what ends up happening is you have to sort of custom do everything at a certain point.

So, like, if you have 11 paving stone sizes instead of 65 paving stone sizes, when something breaks or something needs to be replaced, now you can go to a shelf and sort of get them.

And having interchangeable parts does so much for you to increase the efficiency of any system.

And also, it's sort of like, you know, the United States, you know, we think of them as one body, but the different states had lots of different standards of things.

And so just, like, a bushel of corn was more in one state than another, just in terms of weight.

There's, like, uh, t- truck sizes were allowed in one state versus not allowed in another on a, on a road.

Mm-hmm.

Here's a little preview of this week of wall-to-wall bangers with some very special guests.

[Instrumental music] Huh.

Is the world a better place for having the United States in it? Interesting question.

Roman Mars from the hit podcast 99% Invisible and the BBC's new series, A History of the United States in 100 Objects.

We just figured out something in the United States through just an accident and series of accidents and incidents in history.

We have this ability to export our story, and, uh, a lot of people have bought it.

This soft power was an incredible invention.

Not that cute.

And so it's a story of, you know, what we care about when we care about like animals and also like how we use them as representatives of our sort of how we're feeling about nature and wildlife at the time.

So it's really about what we choose, what we love and the cycle of things we go through when it comes to nature.

how we care about, about animals.

I mean, the bears are really particular, like for a long time in, in American history, they were the, the most formidable enemy of the, of the, of wildlife, you know, like really like with great reverence and they were, and then they were, um, And then they were murdered, like almost they were tried to be eradicated so that that Western expansion could happen.

And then there's a certain point in that cycle where we eradicate them too much and people begin to feel sympathy and they want to save the bear.

And there's this cycle of things when it comes to animals.

So Roman, what is your relationship to the Brannock device?