“In any American object, you can find America.” This is the philosophy of Roman Mars, host and creator of the hit radio show 99% Invisible, as he explains his latest venture into podcasting. By starting here, he tells us in episode one of A History of the United States in 100 Objects, one can “look beyond the official record, outside of the things we’ve already thought to preserve and put behind museum glass”. The podcast tells the stories of objects hiding in plain sight, or that were lost or thrown away because nobody thought they were important enough to keep. These are the stories of afterthoughts and left-behinds.
It is fitting, then, that the series debuts with a “centennial safe”, locked shut as a time capsule in 1876 to mark the US’s 100th birthday and hidden away outside the nation’s consciousness – to the extent that, when the time came to unlock it a century later, no one was quite sure where to find the key. Still, anticipation mounted. These were items citizens of the country’s former self had chosen to represent them and their values. “As we look inside this safe, let us look inside ourselves,” declared Gerald Ford when the key had finally been located and the reopening was nigh. “Let us look into our hearts and into our hopes.”
Instead, they were met with anti-climax: objects that, as the historian Jill Lepore puts it, “don’t cross the valley of time with their significance intact”. I won’t spoil the surprise – listen for yourself to discover what Americans of the late 19th century thought was worth preserving for posterity – but don’t expect to be impressed. Familiar as we might be with the idea that the past is a foreign country, it is still jarring to realise how much our conception of the future, and what might matter there, is shaped by preconceptions in the present that we aren’t even aware of.
Can Mars find 100 objects that transcend time without losing their meaning by the United States’s 250th birthday? Is that loss of meaning itself the most accurate retelling of America’s story? You can make up your own mind – but start by finding the keys.
A History of the United States in 100 Objects
SiriusXM by BBC Studios Audio with Roman Mars and the “99% Invisible” team
[Further reading: The internet wants you to hate Blake Lively]
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This article appears in the 13 May 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Never-Ending Chaos
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