Shows / 99% Invisible
99% Invisible
Design is everywhere in our lives, perhaps most importantly in the places where we've just stopped noticing. 99% Invisible is a weekly exploration of the process and power of design and architecture. From award winning producer Roman Mars. Learn more at 99percentinvisible.org.
Episodes
- 99% Invisible
Half Measures
The United States is one of just a handful of countries that that isn’t officially metric. Instead, Americans measure things our own way, in units that are…
- 99% Invisible
The Containment Plan
It’s hard to overstate the vastness of the Skid Row neighborhood in Los Angeles. It spans roughly 50 blocks, which is about a fifth of the entire downtown area…
- 99% Invisible
The Athletic Brassiere
Among the most important advances in sports technology, few can compete with the invention of the sports bra. Following the passage of Title IX in 1972…
- 99% Invisible
Ponte City Tower
Ponte City Tower, the brutalist cylindrical high-rise that towers over Johannesburg, has gone from a symbol of white opulence to something far more…
- 99% Invisible
The Finnish Experiment
Around the world, there is a lot of buzz around the idea of universal basic income (also known as “unconditional basic income” or UBI). It can take different…
- 99% Invisible
Coal Hogs Work Safe
Coal miner stickers started out as little advertisements that the manufacturers of mining equipment handed out. Even before the late 1960s, when mining safety…
- 99% Invisible
The Age of the Algorithm
Computer algorithms now shape our world in profound and mostly invisible ways. They predict if we’ll be valuable customers and whether we’re likely to repay a…
- 99% Invisible
Notes on an Imagined Plaque
Monuments don’t just appear in the wake of someone’s death — they are erected for reasons specific to a time and place. In 1905, one such memorial was put up…
- 99% Invisible
Person in Lotus Position
Tech analysts estimate that over six billion emojis are sent each day. Emojis, which started off as a collection of low-resolution pixelated images from Japan…
- 99% Invisible
The Great Dismal Swamp
On the border of Virginia and North Carolina stretches a great, dismal swamp. The Great Dismal Swamp, actually — that’s the name British colonists gave it…
- 99% Invisible
The Stethoscope
Imagine for a moment the year 1800. A doctor is meeting with a patient – most likely in the patient’s home. The patient is complaining about shortness of…
- 99% Invisible
Ways of Hearing
When the tape started rolling in old analog recording studios, there was a feeling that musicians were about to capture a particular moment. On tape, there was…
- 99% Invisible
El Gordo
In Spain, they do the lottery differently. First of all, it’s a country-wide obsession — about 75% of Spaniards buy a ticket. There’s more than one lottery in…
- 99% Invisible
The Trials of Dan and Dave
This is the story of an ad campaign produced for the 1992 Olympic games in Barcelona. Perennial runner-up in the sports shoe category, Reebok, was trying to…
- 99% Invisible
Repackaging the Pill
Most people are familiar with at least one version of the birth control pill’s packaging — a round plastic disc which opens like a shell and looks like a…
- 99% Invisible
The Pool and the Stream
This is the story of a curvy, kidney-shaped swimming pool born in Northern Europe that had a huge ripple effect on popular culture in Southern California and…
- 99% Invisible
Mexico 68
The 1968 Olympics took place in Mexico City, Mexico. It was the first Games ever hosted in a Latin American country. And for Mexico City, the event was an…
- 99% Invisible
You Should Do a Story
“You should do a story…” is the first line to a lot of the conversations you have when you work at 99pi. This week we look into a bunch of those stories…
- 99% Invisible
In the Same Ballpark
In the 1992, the Baltimore Orioles opened their baseball season at a brand new stadium called Oriole Park at Camden Yards, right along the downtown harbor. The…
- 99% Invisible
Intro to a new Roman Mars podcast: What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law
Special introductory episode to a new podcast produced by Roman Mars and Elizabeth Joh. Professor Elizabeth Joh teaches Intro to Constitutional Law and most of…
- 99% Invisible
The Yin and Yang of Basketball (Repeat)
In 1891, a physical education teacher in Springfield, Massachusetts invented the game we would come to know as basketball. In setting the height of the…
- 99% Invisible
Squatters of the Lower East Side
In 1987, three years after moving to New York City, Maggie Wrigley found herself on the edge of homelessness. She was trying to figure out where to stay, when…
- 99% Invisible
New Jersey
The Brazilian soccer shirt is iconic. Its bright canary yellow with green trim, worn with blue shorts, is known worldwide. The uniform is joyful and bold and…
- 99% Invisible
This Is Chance: Anchorwoman of the Great Alaska Earthquake
This episode was recorded live as part of the Radiotopia West Coast Tour. It was the middle of the night on March 27, 1964. Earlier that evening, the…
- 99% Invisible
The Modern Necropolis
In the town of Colma, California, the dead outnumber the living by a thousand to one. Located just ten miles south of San Francisco, Colma is filled with…
- 99% Invisible
Reversing the Grid
For most people, electricity only flows one way (into the home), but there are exceptions — people who use solar panels, for instance. In those cases, excess…
- 99% Invisible
Sounds Natural
In most wildlife films, the sounds you hear were not recorded while the cameras were rolling. Most filmmakers use long telephoto lenses to film animals, but…
- 99% Invisible
The Architect of Hollywood
Los Angeles is rich with architectural diversity. On the same block, you could find a retro-futuristic Googie diner next to a Spanish-style mansion, sitting…
- 99% Invisible
Containers
We’re based in beautiful downtown Oakland, CA which is a port city in the San Francisco Bay. Massive container ships travel across the Pacific and end up here…
- 99% Invisible
Manzanar
When Warren Furutani was growing up in Los Angeles in the 1950s, he sometimes heard his parents refer to a place where they once spent time — a place they…
- 99% Invisible
The Falling of the Lenins
On the night of December 8, 2013, a huge crowd gathered on a tree-lined boulevard in downtown Kiev, Ukraine. The crowd was there to watch as a statue in the…
- 99% Invisible
Negative Space: Logo Design with Michael Bierut
Logos used to be a thing people didn’t really give much thought to. But over the last decade, the volume and intensity of arguments about logos have increased…
- 99% Invisible
State (Sanctuary, Part 2)
In the 1980s, the United States experienced a refugee crisis. Thousands of Central Americans were fleeing civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala, traveling…
- 99% Invisible
Church (Sanctuary, Part 1)
In the 1980s, Rev. John Fife and his congregation at Southside Presbyterian Church began to help Central American migrants fleeing persecution from US backed…
- 99% Invisible
Atom in the Garden of Eden
As the world entered the Atomic Age, humankind faced a new fear that permeated just about every aspect of daily life: the threat of nuclear war. And while the…
- 99% Invisible
Usonia the Beautiful
Frank Lloyd Wright believed that the buildings we live in shape the kinds of people we become. His aim was nothing short of rebuilding the entire culture of…
- 99% Invisible
Usonia 1
Frank Lloyd Wright was a bombastic character that ultimately changed the field of architecture, and not just through his big, famous buildings. Before…
- 99% Invisible
The Eponymist
Eponym (noun): A person after whom a discovery, invention, place, etc., is named or thought to be named; a name or noun formed after a person. An eponym…
- 99% Invisible
The Revolutionary Post
Winifred Gallagher, author of How the Post Office Created America: A History, argues that the post office is not simply an inexpensive way to send a letter…
- 99% Invisible
Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle
On January 3, 1979, two officers from the Los Angeles Police Department went to the home of Eulia May Love, a 39-year-old African-American mother. The police…
- 99% Invisible
Mini-Stories: Volume 2
Part 2 where host Roman Mars talks to the 99pi producers about their favorite “Mini-Stories.” These are little anecdotes or seeds of a story about design and…
- 99% Invisible
Mini-Stories: Volume 1
Host Roman Mars talks to the 99pi producers about their favorite “Mini-Stories.” These are little anecdotes or seeds of a story about design and architecture…
- 99% Invisible
Plat of Zion
The urban grid of Salt Lake City, Utah is designed to tell you exactly where you are in relation to Temple Square, one of the holiest sites for Mormons…
- 99% Invisible
Guano Island
In 2014, President Obama expanded the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, making it the largest marine preserve in the world at the time. The…
- 99% Invisible
NBC Chimes
The NBC chimes may be the most famous sound in broadcasting. Originating in the 1920s, the three key sequential notes are familiar to generations of radio…
- 99% Invisible
Dollar Store Town
Dollar stores are not just a U.S. phenomenon. They can be found in Australia and the United Kingdom, the Middle East and Mexico. And a lot of the stuff—the…
- 99% Invisible
Reverb
Through a combination of passive and active acoustics, architects and acousticians can control the sounds of spaces to fit any kind of need. With…
- 99% Invisible
Ten Letters for the President
People who write the White House know that the president himself will most likely not see their message. Many of their letters start with phrases like, “I know…
- 99% Invisible
The Shift
Every now and again, a truly great athlete shatters all previous assumptions about what’s possible to achieve in a sport. When this happens, opposing teams…
- 99% Invisible
Space Trash, Space Treasure
In the summer of 1961 the upper stage of the rocket carrying the Transit 4A satellite blew up about two hours after launch. It was the first known human-made…
- 99% Invisible
McMansion Hell
Few forms of contemporary architecture draw as much criticism as the McMansion, a particular type of oversized house that people love to hate. McMansions…
- 99% Invisible
Half a House
On the night of February 27th, 2010, a magnitude of 8.8 earthquake hit Constitución, Chile and it was the second biggest that the world had seen in half a…
- 99% Invisible
Project Cybersyn
On September 11, 1973, a military junta violently took control of Chile, which was led at the time by President Salvador Allende. Allende had become president…
- 99% Invisible
Longbox (Repeat)
Reporter Whitney Jones argues that R.E.M.’s Out of Time is the most politically significant album in the history of the United States. Because of its…
- 99% Invisible
The Trend Forecast
Who decides that the color this season is “mint green” or that denim jackets are “back?” Of course, there’s top-down fashion, where couture houses and runway…
- 99% Invisible
Making Up Ground
Large portions of San Francisco, New York City, Boston, Seattle, Hong Kong and Marseilles were built on top of human made land. What is now Mumbai, India, was…
- 99% Invisible
Public Works
Infrastructure makes modern civilization possible. Roads, power grids, sewage systems and water networks all underpin society as we know it, forming the basis…
- 99% Invisible
On Average
In many ways, the built world was not designed for you. It was designed for the average person. Standardized tests, building codes, insurance rates, clothing…
- 99% Invisible
Photo Credit
Founded by architect Walter Gropius in 1919, the Bauhaus school in Germany would go on to shape modern architecture, art, and design for decades to come. The…
- 99% Invisible
A Sea Worth its Salt
The largest body of water in California was formed by a mistake. In 1905, the California Development Company accidentally flooded a huge depression in the…