Wherever you are, stop for a moment and take a look around you.
At all times, you are surrounded by objects that at first glance seem meaningless, but
if you really think about them. They tell stories. A boarding pass that's still folded in your pocket. The book on the shelf that you are assigned in freshman seminar only read half of, but you still held onto for 20 years.
The picture of your kids at the beach.
“Or even the paperclip that once fastened some important papers, but for life of”
you, you can't remember which ones.
Gather enough of these objects and they begin to form a biography of who you are through things. The precious keep-secks, the clutter on your nightstand, even the stuff you'll eventually throw away. Now, stay with me here.
Imagine you are the United States of America, and it's your 250th birthday. And objects would tell your history. Of course, there's the original Declaration of Independence and Lincoln's top hat, and I don't know, like a can-in from Fort Sumter, all worthy and fascinating objects to be sure, but there is another story to be told using the objects that you don't see on sweaty
fuel trips to museums. The equivalent of the ticket stoves, and the favorite knickknacks, and the paperclips. Like a bootleg band t-shirt that tells the history of American punk rock, where a little blue book that enslaved people transformed into a tool of liberation, or a one-inch screw that shows how America built a hidden industrial empire.
The screw thread is a simple device, but it ties together the whole mechanical skeleton
“of our civilization, which, on the one hand, seems over-blown, but you're like, "Is it wrong?”
I don't know that it's wrong." It's not wrong, my guy. From 99% of visible and BBC studios, I'm Roman Mars, and this is a history of the United States in a hundred objects.
As the country marks its semi-quencentennial word, I will never say again, we're going
to collect objects from across American history, 100 objects to be exact. Picture a western where they're robbing a train, and there's a safe on one of the cars of the railroad train. This is the icon of his presidency. This is it.
This is the Billy Passen. To tell the story of who we are and where we've been.
“Remember, this is before the invention of the electric bulb, so a night fell.”
It was a night. Yes. We're going to talk to historians and journalists and regular folks who are obsessed with objects beyond the official record. Like, forgotten, nobody's, they might have well been called.
Objects have tell a history as sprawling and contradictory as America itself. The Blueback Speller is something that became a particularly prized possession because it meant that you might not be free and body, but you could be free and mind. 100 objects, 100 stories, a new history of the US hiding in plain sight. A history of the United States in 100 objects, a brand new show from the BBC in 99%
invisible. We're going to publish a new episode every Friday in the 99% visible feed, which you can find, wherever you get your podcasts.
