99% Invisible25 Jun 2024

Backfired: The Vaping Wars

When two Stanford graduate students set out to create a new kind of cigarette that wouldn’t kill them, they didn’t foresee all the obstacles that lay ahead—or the powerful forces their invention would unleash. Nearly 10 years after the launch of the JUUL, Backfired: The Vaping Wars asks: Could e-cigarettes have been the solution to one of the world’s most pressing public health problems—or was this technology doomed to introduce a whole new generation to nicotine, and end up perpetuating an intractable addiction?

Backfired is the latest podcast from Prologue Projects, the award-winning team behind Slow Burn, Fiasco, and Think Twice: Michael Jackson. Backfired is a show about the business of unintended consequences—what happens when solving one problem inadvertently leads to a host of new ones?

In this tale of opportunity, addiction, and good intentions gone awry, hosts Leon Neyfakh and Arielle Pardes offer a definitive account of Juul Labs’ rise and fall, as well as the ubiquitous illegal vape market that sprouted up in its wake. Through dozens of original interviews, they gain access to the key players who got swept up—sometimes unwittingly—in the firestorm that reshaped the culture of nicotine.

Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and a whole week early.

Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(807)

100 Objects #8: Billy Possum

In 1902, an American classic was born: the teddy bear. Named after President Theodore Roosevelt, the toy became a huge hit, and sparked an idea…maybe every president from then on should have their own...

10 Jul 36min

The Score

We keep score of everything these days. But what happens when the numbers start changing what we actually care about? Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free...

7 Jul 26min

100 Objects #7: The Otis Pamphlet

Before the Declaration of Independence was even a twinkle in the founding fathers' eyes, there was James Otis. Journalist Jack Hitt returns to tell the wild, tragic story of America’s forgotten proto-...

3 Jul 37min

Transatlantic Fiber-Optic Expialidocious

Before the internet went global, one undersea gamble made it possible. Jane Ruffino’s story, "Say Goodbye to the Undersea Cable That Made the Global Internet Possible," appears in the May-June issue ...

30 Jun 31min

100 Objects #6: "Sharpened Screwdriver"

In this episode, Roman and historians Heather Ann Thompson and Elliot Williams tell the story of the sharpened screwdriver: the object at the heart of the 1984 Bernhard Goetz subway shooting. In a dif...

26 Jun 40min

The Most Exciting Change America Has Ever Seen

Billions of state quarters disappeared from circulation...and that was exactly the plan. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and a whole week early. Star...

23 Jun 43min

100 Objects #5: Blue Back Speller

In this episode, Roman and historian Imani Perry follow the Webster Blue Back Speller from the early days of the United States, to the heart of Black intellectual life. Through the lives of Booker T. ...

19 Jun 45min

The Horn That Divided the World Cup

Love it or hate it, one buzzing horn changed the sound of the World Cup forever. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and a whole week early. Start a free...

16 Jun 33min