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In the mid-1970’s, a small college radio station created an evening program catering to a new socioeconomic group referred to as the “new Black middle class.” The show was called “The Quiet Storm” and it grew so popular that an entire genre of music would spring up alongside it. Artists like Anita Baker, Luther Vandross, and many more would find massive success in the genre, performing smooth and sexy songs you could turn on after a long day.
Audio producer Christopher Johnson made a piece about The Quiet Storm for the legendary podcast about design 99% Invisible and he joins Anna to talk about why Quiet Storm music will always feel like home to him.
You can listen to The Quiet Storm playlist from 99% Invisible here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0cuU6j4C77EEuQDRWEEKFb?si=a2u3yKzLTwqz7cvycywmUw
This episode was produced for DSM by Andrew Dunn.
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And if you’re new to the show, welcome. We’re so glad you’re here. Find us and follow us on Instagram and you can find Anna’s newsletter at annasale.substack.com. Our new email address, where you can reach us with voice memos, pep talks, questions, critiques, is [email protected].

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An uncomfortable amount of the internet has been influenced by Barstool Sports. Many prominent online figures, particularly women, hail from the website, and the media company has planted its flag in everything from internet culture to crypto. Upon reading founder Dave Portnoy’s memoir, however, all Scaachi Koul found was an angry man made up of grudges. In this episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by Koul to talk about Barstool’s legacy, its secret influence on the internet, and why, despite this, Dave Portnoy is so bitter about it all.

This podcast is produced by Vic Whitley-Berry, Daisy Rosario, and Kate Lindsay.
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Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon is one of the most played, purchased and praised albums of all time. Yet its enduring legacy might be its supernatural chart longevity. Officially, the 1973 long-player has spent nearly a thousand weeks on the Billboard album chart. But that number probably understates its past performance, not to mention its future potential, with new generations of teenagers discovering Dark Side every year

Join Chris Molanphy as he explores Pink Floyd's deathless totem and traces the band’s evolution from ’60s psychedelic curios to dorm-room poster icons. Will Dark Side be able to hold onto the all-time Billboard record into the 2030s?

Podcast production by Kevin Bendis.

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Platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have expanded from letting people bet on just sports to everything from political events to reality TV, and even the weather. But by injecting financial incentives into things like disease outbreaks, we’re even more susceptible to bad actors and manipulation. On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by creator Austin Evans to talk about the spread of prediction markets, and how a tool once believed to help us make sense of society ended up making everything even more chaotic.

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This podcast is produced by Vic Whitley-Berry, Daisy Rosario, and Kate Lindsay.
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Most of us use GPS—the Global Positioning System—on a daily basis: to find our location when we’re driving, running, shopping, dating, and so much more. But GPS is even more important, and more vulnerable, than you think.

In the last few years, GPS interference has been reported all over the world, from war zones to shipping routes to public squares. What was once the fanciful plot of a Bond movie—bad guy manipulates GPS to start World War III—is increasingly plausible. How did the world come to rely so heavily on such an unreliable system?

In this episode of Decoder Ring, host Willa Paskin talks to journalist Katherine Dunn, author of the new book Little Blue Dot: How GPS Shaped the Modern World. You’ll learn how GPS works, why it was created, how it became so ubiquitous, and why it’s now under attack. You’ll also hear from Dr. Todd Humphreys, an aerospace engineer who manipulated GPS to trick an $85 million superyacht into following his direction—for science, of course.

This episode was written and produced by Max Freedman. It was edited by Willa Paskin and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Our intern is Phoebe Mulder.

If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at [email protected] or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.

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Sources for This Episode
Burgess, Matt. “When a tanker vanishes, all the evidence points to Russia,” WIRED, Sep. 21, 2017.
Dunn, Katherine. Little Blue Dot: How GPS Shaped the Modern World, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2026.
Dunn, Katherine. “How to Hack a Superyacht,” The Walrus, Jun. 13, 2026.
Hopper, Nate. “The Thorny Problem of Keeping the Internet’s Time,” The New Yorker, Sep. 30, 2022.
Hopper, Nate. “The Timekeeper of Ukraine,” The Atlantic, Sep. 21, 2024.
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