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
Paved Paradise
LA might be the most extreme parking city on the planet. Parking regulations have made it nearly impossible to build new affordable housing, or to renovate old…
- 99% Invisible
Nuts and Bolts
In her new book Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World (in a Big Way), structural engineer Roma Agrawal identifies and examines the…
- 99% Invisible
Craptions
Bad closed captions can be entertaining, but they can be serious, too, because captions are a critical tool for lots of lots of people. There are the people…
- 99% Invisible
For Amusement Only (Free Replay)
There's a new movie out called Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game. It’s a fun and extremely meta biopic telling the story of Roger Sharpe, who, with one…
- 99% Invisible
Dear John and Roman
Last year, Roman Mars teamed up with Hank Green to guest host Dear Hank & John -- this year he's back on the Greens' show once again, but this time with Hank's…
- 99% Invisible
For a Dollar and a Dream
From scratchers to the Powerball, the lottery is the most popular form of gambling in the United States, even though the odds of winning a big jackpot is…
- 99% Invisible
De Fiets Is Niets
Today the Netherlands has a reputation as a kind of bicycling paradise. Dutch people own more bicycles per capita than any other place in the world. The…
- 99% Invisible
The Panopticon Effect
The “panopticon” might be the best known prison concept in the world. In the original design, all the cells are built around a central guard tower, designed to…
- 99% Invisible
The Wilderness Tool
Vintage crosscuts that were made between 1880 and 1930 are often the tool of choice for trail workers who maintain the country’s roughly 112 million acres of…
- 99% Invisible
Twenty Thousand Hertz- Golden
The podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz is a show about the world's most interesting and recognizable sounds. I think of it as almost a sibling of 99% Invisible…
- 99% Invisible
A Whale-Oiled Machine
Back when whale oil was mainly used as a fuel to burn in lanterns and streetlights, an enterprising man named William F. Nye found a new way to sell whale oil…
- 99% Invisible
The Lost Cities of Geo Redux
If we’ve learned anything from watching the turnover of tech giants like Yahoo! and MySpace, it’s that internet darlings rise and fall. And there’s something…
- 99% Invisible
RoboUmp
One study from 2018 found that Major League Baseball umpires blow about 14 calls every game. That’s 34,000 bad calls every year. And it makes a difference. A…
- 99% Invisible
Orange Alternative
In the 1980s a Polish anti-communist group called the Orange Alternative used cute images of a mythical creature with a tiny pointed hat to spread its…
- 99% Invisible
The Chinatown Punk Wars
When LA punks were looking for a place to play in the late 1970s, Chinatown welcomed the unruly scene. But it was an uneasy alliance that led to fierce…
- 99% Invisible
The Day the Music Stopped
On Aug. 1, 1942, the nation’s recording studios went silent. Musicians were fed up with the new technologies threatening their livelihoods, so they refused to…
- 99% Invisible
Six-on-Six Basketball
In the 20th century, Iowa high school girls basketball was HUGE but it was not the game we know today. In 6-on-6 basketball, the three forwards only play…
- 99% Invisible
The Comrades
If you live in South Africa, you definitely know someone who runs ultra-marathons, probably lots of someones. Here, ultras are the stuff of a whole country’s…
- 99% Invisible
A Sea of Yellow
Back in 2017 we ran an episode about the history of Brazil's iconic, yellow national soccer jersey. We were reminded of that story during the recent world cup…
- 99% Invisible
Mini-Stories: Volume 16
We’re kicking off the new year at 99pi with a fresh installment of mini-stories, including: what lies at the intersection of a street and a road; the most…
- 99% Invisible
Balikbayan Boxes
This time of year, right in the middle of the holiday season, there's a beloved, frenzied tradition playing out in Filipino households all around the world…
- 99% Invisible
Mini-Stories: Volume 15
The whole conceit of this show is that if look at the world in the right way, you’ll see stories everywhere. Some of the stories are epic power struggles…
- 99% Invisible
The Divided Dial
If you’ve ever flipped through the radio dial — not satellite, not podcasts, but good old-fashioned AM and FM radio — you may have noticed something. Right…
- 99% Invisible
Cougar Town
Wildlife and urban development don’t usually go well together. Roads in particular fracture the habitats of wide-ranging animals. It restricts their movements…
- 99% Invisible
Super Citizens
Los Angeles' El Peatonito is part of a subset of real life superheroes who are more focused on things like picking up trash and taking on civic issues than…
- 99% Invisible
Freedom House Ambulance Service: American Sirens
When people ask me what my favorite episode of 99% Invisible is, I have a hard time answering. Not because they’re all my precious little babies or some such…
- 99% Invisible
Train Set: Track Two
Funiculars are great, which is why the main image from our previous train episode featured one -- except we didn't actually talk about that one during the…
- 99% Invisible
Articles of Interest: American Ivy
Articles of Interest is a show about what we wear. Host and producer Avery Trufelman investigates our collectively held beliefs about fashion and explores…
- 99% Invisible
The Safety Bicycle
The basic mechanics of the bike are pretty simple --- it’s basically a triangle with wheels and a chain drive to propel it forward. No batteries or engines. It…
99% InvisibleWalk of Fame
Even if you haven't made the pilgrimage to Southern California, you can probably already picture what the (5:02) Hollywood Walk of Fame looks like. It's a 1.3…
- 99% Invisible
Vuvuzela
The vuvuzela is a two foot long injection-molded plastic horn. It only plays one note: a B flat. And it gradually became a regular feature of South African…
- 99% Invisible
Wickedest Sound
Jamaica is famous around the world for its music, including genres like ska, dub, and reggae. It’s tempting to think that the powerful amplifiers and giant…
- 99% Invisible
Tale of the Jackalope
The magical mythical "jackalope" is a essentially a horned rabbit, with antlers of different sizes and shapes. The jackalope is a mascot of the American West –…
- 99% Invisible
President Clinton Interviews Roman Mars
On this special feature episode, President Bill Clinton interviews 99% Invisible host and creator Roman Mars. Roman Mars has spent his career chronicling these…
- 99% Invisible
Search and Ye Might Find
Adam Rogers has been thinking and writing about what’s known in the industry simply as "search." For the last decade, people have been grumbling about not…
- 99% Invisible
Monumental Diplomacy
In downtown Windhoek, Namibia -- at the intersection of Fidel Castro Street and Robert Mugabe Avenue -- there's an imposing gold building with an affectionate…
- 99% Invisible
First Errand
Back in March, Netflix picked up a long running Japanese TV program based on a children’s book from the 1970s. The show is called Old Enough, but the name of…
- 99% Invisible
Bleep!
There's a particular one-kilohertz tone that is universally understood to be covering up inappropriate words on radio and TV. But there are other options, too…
- 99% Invisible
What Roman Mars Can Learn About Con Law- The Longest Week
In the final week of the most recent term, the Supreme Court decided to limit one constitutional right (abortion) and expand another constitutional right…
- 99% Invisible
Re:peat
A few years back, 99pi producer Emmett FitzGerald brought us a beautiful story about peat bogs. Peat is essential for biodiversity and for the climate – it is…
- 99% Invisible
99% Vernacular: Volume 3
In the final episode of our vernacular spectacular anniversary series, 99pi producers and friends of the show will be sharing more stories of regional…
- 99% Invisible
99% Vernacular: Volume 2
Only a small percentage of architecture is actually designed by architects. And while a famous architect-designed tower in a skyline might be the best way to…
- 99% Invisible
99% Vernacular: Volume 1
For the 500th episode of 99% Invisible, we started thinking about the kinds of designs that we love from the places we have lived -- and even some regional…
- 99% Invisible
Say Aloe to My Little Frond
Houseplants are having a moment right now. In 2020, 66% of people in the US owned at least one plant, and sales have skyrocketed during the pandemic…
99% InvisibleThe Octagon House
99% Invisible producer emeritus Avery Trufelman traveled from New York to San Francisco recently, and took host Roman Mars to see (0:31) Octagon House, an…
- 99% Invisible
Hometown Village
Sakhalin is a long, skinny island east of Russia's mainland. Russia and Japan have long fought over the territory, which has left the ethnic Koreans who came…
- 99% Invisible
The Rights of Rice and Future of Nature
The Ojibwe name for wild rice is Manoomin, which translates to “the good berry.” The scientific name is Zizania palustris. It’s the only grain indigenous to…
- 99% Invisible
Meet Us by the Fountain
No teenager in America in the 1980s could avoid the gravitational pull of the mall, not even author Alexandra Lange. In her new book, Meet Me by the Fountain…
- 99% Invisible
Flag Days: Unfolding a Moment
Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag. At least, that's what we were taught in school. But when historians go searching…there’s no proof to be found. In…
- 99% Invisible
Divining Provenance
Priceless cultural artifacts have been plundered and sold for hundreds of years. You can find these relics in museums and in private collections. In recent…
- 99% Invisible
Inheriting Froebel's Gifts
In the late 1700s, a young man named Friedrich Froebel was on track to become an architect when a friend convinced him to pursue a path toward education…
- 99% Invisible
The Missing Middle
Downtown Toronto has a dense core of tall, glassy buildings along the waterfront of Lake Ontario. Outside of that, lots short single family homes sprawl out in…
- 99% Invisible
Train Set
The greatest mode of transportation is the funicular, which is a special kind of train pulled by a cable that runs up steep slopes. But trains are great even…
- 99% Invisible
Roman Mars on Blank Check with Griffin and David
Bonus episode: Roman Mars on Blank Check with Griffin and David talking about The Quick and The Dead (Sam Raimi, 1995) Roman note: I LOVE this show! Many of us…
- 99% Invisible
Pandemic Tracking and the Future of Data
Data is the lifeblood of public health, and has been since the beginning of the field. But essential data gathering for the COVID pandemic was hindered by a…
- 99% Invisible
It’s a Small Aisle After All
If you’ve ever been to a supermarket in the US, you’ve probably seen an ethnic food aisle. Maybe it was called the "international aisle," or "world foods," but…
- 99% Invisible
Atlas Obscura
Standing on Beechey island, a peninsula off Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic, are four lonely graves: three members of an ill-fated expedition to the…
- 99% Invisible
Rumble Strip
Every year in the spring, small towns throughout New England host their annual town meeting. Town meetings take place in high school gyms or town halls, and…
- 99% Invisible
Murder Most Fowl
While urban parks are safe havens for birds, parks are often surrounded by condos and hotels and office buildings with floor-to-ceiling windows. And these…
- 99% Invisible
Dear Hank and John and Roman
So why don't we have mouth Roombas? Is the universe full of chickens? What scientific advances are happening? What was the first internet purchase? How do I…