The Cassette tape was great in so many ways, but let’s be honest, they never really sounded great. But because the cassette was so much cheaper and easier to use and portable, a lot of people didn't care so much about the audio quality. They just wanted to be able to use something that they could carry around with them. The cassette’s other big advantage: it was easy to record on.
We talked to Marc Masters about his new book High Bias, about the history of the cassette. One chapter about concert bootleggers covers perhaps the greatest success story of the cassette: Grateful Dead live tapes.
Long Strange Tape
Plus we're featuring a bonus story that we produced in 2016 in collaboration with Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything about a place where cassettes were of vital importance.
Alphabetical Order
Cute Little Monstrosities of Nature
The Weight
Shirley Cards
Finding Julia Morgan
Fifty-Four Forty or Fight
I Can't Believe It's Pink Margarine
Changing Stripes
The House that Came in the Mail Again
Corpse, Corps, Horse and Worse
Yankee Pyramids
Real Fake Bridges
Model Organism
Full Spectrum
A Field Guide to Water
War, Famine, Pestilence, and Design
The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food
The Lows of High Tech
Hanko
Stuff the British Stole
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This Day in Esoteric Political History
The Allusionist
On the Media
Pollyanna
Just So Stories
The Atlas Obscura Podcast
Unexplainable