A single 👍 emoji sent over text was meant to say “got it”—but instead, it kicked off a $62,000 legal battle and raised the question: can an emoji seal a contract?

😅⚖️

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At the January 6th Capitol insurrection, rioters waved Confederate, MAGA, and Trump-as-Rambo flags. Easy to miss without knowing the design was a bright yellow flag with three red stripes — the flag of South Vietnam.

There were actually several confounding international flags present at the Capitol riot that day: the Canadian, Indian, South Korean flags, all were spotted somewhere in the mayhem. But what was peculiar about the Vietnamese flag being there was that it's not technically the flag of Vietnam but the Republic of Vietnam, a country that no longer exists. And what this flag stands for (or should stand for) remains a really contentious issue for the Vietnamese American community.

This episode originally aired in 2021.

Changing Stripes

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A goofy Shakira remix, a nervy penalty kick, and 60,000 fans turning banter into legend—welcome to the world of football chants.

One-Nil to the Arsenal

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If you're one of the millions of Americans struggling with your tax forms today, you're not alone. Even Albert Einstein allegedly found income taxes to be "the hardest thing in the world to understand." But how did our tax system become so complicated?

I've Got 1099 Problems...

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John Green uncovers how the world’s deadliest curable disease still thrives—and why everything, from cowboy hats to colonial borders, traces back to tuberculosis.

Everything Is Tuberculosis

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Take a whirlwind tour of Memphis with the city’s most enthusiastic historian, uncovering duck parades, telecom turf wars, and a street named after a single day in 1934.

A Walking Tour with Mr. Memphis

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In 1991, one of the strangest buildings in America opened — a 32-storey, stainless steel pyramid in Memphis, Tennessee.

The Great American Pyramid

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A group of artists explored the back hallways of a mall in Providence, RI, and found the perfect place to build a private hangout. We interviewed the group's leader Michael Townsend a few years back, and he's now the subject of a new documentary called Secret Mall Apartment. Plus, mall history with Alexandra Lange.

For showtimes and more information, visit secretmallapartment.com.

The stories in this episode originally aired in 2018 and 2022.

Secret Mall Apartments

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When global trade reshapes a city, who pays the price—and who fights back?

Alexis Madrigal’s new book is called The Pacific Circuit: A Globalized Account of the Battle for the Soul of an American City.

Beautiful West Oakland, California

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After we finished up The Power Broker, a bunch of people were asking us what other books we’d been reading. A group of us got together and presented some of our recent favorites, and the choices were so good and surprising and charming, we're now sharing it widely.

Here are the books covered in this episode:

• Lasha's book: Usha's Pickle Digest by Usha R Prabakaran
• Chris's books: What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer (and The Power Broker by Robert Caro 😁)
• Vivian's books:  Orbital by Samantha Harvey, Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, and How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang
• Jayson's books: Hoppity Frog by Emma Parrish (for the kids),  Scattered Snows, to the North: Poems by Carl Philips, and Blackouts by Justin Torres
• Joe's book: Plunkitt of Tammany Hall by George Washington Plunkitt
• Roman's book: The Pine Barrens by John McPhee

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What We're Reading

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