Short archive documentaries about objects everybody owns and nobody has looked at properly. One clear idea per film, explained with something you could hold — and every number on screen has a citation.
The newest film
9:27 How It Works
Pull a string tight and pluck it and it is almost silent. For five thousand years every string instrument was an answer to that one problem — then in 1932 someone solved it another way, and the body stopped mattering.
Money Illusions
Barter never happened. The first money was a debt pressed into clay 2,500 years before the first coin — and every kind of money since has been a promise someone could break.
One object, one physics problem, five thousand years of people trying to solve it. The films that start with something on your desk and end somewhere you did not expect.
Money is a promise, and the promise has been stretched further than almost anyone realises. Sourced history of the thing in your pocket that is mostly not there.
The whole timeline from The Day Money Broke on one sheet — clay tablet to Lydian electrum to the note with twenty zeros. Every date on it is cited on the film's page.
Options A2 · 18×24in
$38 Notify me
The 1932 cast-aluminium lap steel, shot from above on parchment, with the red stamp. For anyone who has been told the wood is what matters.
Options A2 · 18×24in
$34 Notify me
The wordmark and the four marbles, printed small on the chest. Heavyweight cotton, no logo the size of a dinner plate.
Options S–3XL · Black · Cream
$32 Notify me
One email per film. The sources, the things that got cut, and the link. Nothing else, ever.
