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
Grid Locked
In February 2021, it began to snow in Austin, Texas, which was unusual, and exciting for some, at least until the power dropped out for millions of people. To…
- 99% Invisible
Natalie de Blois: To Tell the Truth
Natalie de Blois contributed to some of the most iconic Modernist works created for corporate America, all while raising four children. After leaving this…
- 99% Invisible
The Future of the Final Mile
While something like dial-up might mostly be a thing of the past, the truth is copper phone lines still connect a lot of people to the internet over DSL. And…
- 99% Invisible
Broken Heart Park
In the 1990s Dave Davis worked as the groundskeeper at a small neighborhood park in a suburb of St. Louis called Creve Coeur. It was an unpaid position, but it…
- 99% Invisible
According to Need wins duPont-Columbia Award
The Columbia Journalism School recently announced the 16 winners of the 2022 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, including According to Need, a…
- 99% Invisible
Art Imitates Art
There's a small neighborhood within the SEZ of Shenzhen that is known for mass-producing copies of the most celebrated works of Western art, all painted…
- 99% Invisible
Call of Duty: Free
On the west coast of Ireland, on the banks of an estuary dividing county Limerick from county Clare, lies a small town called Shannon. But Shannon is not a…
- 99% Invisible
Reaction Offices and the Future of Work
People have been going back and forth about what makes a healthy and productive office since there have been offices. The 20th century was full of misbegotten…
- 99% Invisible
Rock Paper Scissors Bus
When the two greatest auction houses in the world – Christie’s and Sotheby’s – vied for the privilege of auctioning off $20 million worth of art in 2004…
- 99% Invisible
The Punisher Skull
The Punisher has always been a complicated Marvel antihero: a man whose creator imagined him as a reaction to the failures of government at home and in the…
- 99% Invisible
Mini-Stories : Volume 14
At the end of the calendar year and into the new year the 99pi staff collects a bunch of short, joyful little stories that are fun to produce and make us…
- 99% Invisible
Mini-Stories : Volume 13
We're kicking off the new year at 99pi with a fresh installment of mini-stories, including: a strange collision of mundane infrastructure and political…
- 99% Invisible
Mini-Stories : Volume 12
It's that time of year again! When 99pi producers and friends of the show join Roman to tell shorter stories, many of which have been sitting on our idea…
- 99% Invisible
The Three Santas of Slovenia
Slovenia is a small country in Central Europe nestled between Italy, Austria, Croatia and Hungary. It's a land of snowy white peaks, green valleys, and…
- 99% Invisible
The Epic of Collier Heights
For Black Americans, Collier Heights became a suburban jewel in the postwar South spanning thousands of acres and packed with nature. Just as amazing as the…
- 99% Invisible
Alphabetical Order
In much of the western world, alphabetical order is simply a default we take for granted. It’s often the one we try first -- or the one we use as a last resort…
- 99% Invisible
Cute Little Monstrosities of Nature
The French bulldog is now the second most popular breed in America. Their cute features, portable size, and physical features make for a dog that can easily…
- 99% Invisible
The Weight
Fitness trends come and go. But the simple weight is an anchor in the shifting tides of culture. As workout equipment has become canonized within the realm of…
- 99% Invisible
Shirley Cards
Even if we think of the camera as a neutral technology, it is not. In the vast spectrum of human colors, photographic tools and practices tend to prioritize…
- 99% Invisible
Finding Julia Morgan
Born in 1872, American architect and engineer Julia Morgan designed hundreds of buildings over her prolific career, famous for her work on incredible…
- 99% Invisible
Fifty-Four Forty or Fight
At a glance, the border between the United States and Canada would seem to be at the friendlier end of the international boundary spectrum. But even though the…
- 99% Invisible
I Can't Believe It's Pink Margarine
Margarine is yellow, like butter, but it hasn't always been. At times and in places, it has been a bland white, or even a dull pink. These strange variations…
- 99% Invisible
Changing Stripes
Rioters carried many familiar flags during the January 6th insurrection at the United States Capitol -- Confederate, MAGA, as well as some custom-made ones…
- 99% Invisible
The House that Came in the Mail Again
The Sears & Roebuck Mail Order Catalog was nearly omnipresent in early 20th century American life. By 1908, one fifth of Americans were subscribers. Anyone…
- 99% Invisible
Corpse, Corps, Horse and Worse
When it comes to English spelling and pronunciation, there is plenty of rhyme and very little reason. But what is the reason for that? Why among all European…
- 99% Invisible
Yankee Pyramids
Presidential libraries are tributes to greatness, "[a] self-congratulatory, almost fictional account of someone's achievements, where all the blemishes are…
- 99% Invisible
Real Fake Bridges
The great Jacob Goldstein, author of Money: The True Story of a Made Up Thing, stops by to tell us two stories about the design of paper currency around the…
- 99% Invisible
Model Organism
Axolotls are nature’s great regenerators. They are able to grow back not just their tails, but also legs, arms, even parts of vital organs, including their…
- 99% Invisible
Full Spectrum
In 2015 the world was divided into two warring factions overnight. And at the center of this schism was a single photograph. Cecilia Bleasdale took a picture…
- 99% Invisible
A Field Guide to Water
What does water mean to you? In this feature, author Bonnie Tsui (Why We Swim), actress Joy Bryant, submarine pilot Erika Bergman, figure skater Elladj Baldé…
- 99% Invisible
War, Famine, Pestilence, and Design
When Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt were promoting The 99% Invisible City in late 2020, one question came up over and over again in conversations and interviews…
- 99% Invisible
The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food
Officially titled The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food, it was often known simply as “Kniga” (translated: "book") because it was one of the only cookbooks to…
- 99% Invisible
The Lows of High Tech
Britt Young is a geographer and tech writer based in the Bay Area. She also has what's called a "congenital upper limb deficiency." In other words, she was…
- 99% Invisible
Hanko
Hanko, sometimes called insho, are the carved stamp seals that people in Japan often use in place of signatures. Hanko seals are made from materials ranging…
- 99% Invisible
Stuff the British Stole
Throughout its reign, the British Empire stole a lot of stuff. Today those objects are housed in genteel institutions across the UK and the world. They usually…
- 99% Invisible
Mine!
Every year, fights break out on airplanes. They happen between the people who lean back in their seats, and the people who get their knees smooshed. Sometimes…
- 99% Invisible
Katie Mingle's Right to Roam
We revisit Katie Mingle's Right to Roam episode as we say goodbye In the United Kingdom, the freedom to walk through private land is known as “the right to…
- 99% Invisible
Flag Days: The Red, the Black & the Green
After Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd last year, tens of thousands of people all over the world took to the streets to protest…
- 99% Invisible
Flag Days: Good Luck, True South
Correction: Our staff producer pronounced the the Japanese word "ōbōn" incorrectly in this episode. It is pronounced OH-bohn not oh-BAHN. Let us be the first…
- 99% Invisible
The Clinch
After Producer Katie Mingle's mom wrote a romance novel, Katie set out to understand the romance genre and its classic covers. There was a lot to unpack. The…
- 99% Invisible
Pipe Dreams
Most people probably don't spend a lot of time thinking about their toilets, but they are both a modern marvel while also being somewhat of a failure of…
- 99% Invisible
Matters of Time
For the most part, we take time for granted; maybe we don’t have enough of it, but we at least know how it works --- well, most of the time. A lot of what we…
- 99% Invisible
Tanz Tanz Revolution
Today, Berlin is one of the premier destinations for techno music fans. People come from all over the world to party all night to the rhythmic beat of Berlin's…
- 99% Invisible
Abandoned Ships
If you look around you right now, about 90% of what you’re looking at came to you onboard a cargo ship—your television, your sofa, most of the stuff in your…
99% InvisibleCurb Cuts (Repeat)
If you live in an American city and you don’t personally use a wheelchair, it's easy to overlook the small ramp at most intersections, between the sidewalk and…
- 99% Invisible
La Brega in Levittown
On the show this week, we’re bringing you an episode of a new podcast called, La Brega. And to tell us all about the series is Alana Casanova-Burgess…
99% InvisibleWelcome to Jurassic Art Redux
Kurt and Roman talk about icebergs and how we visualize them all wrong. Plus, we visit a classic 99pi story by Emmett FitzGerald about visualizing dinosaurs…
99% InvisibleThe Real Book
Since the mid-1970s, almost every jazz musician has owned a copy of the same book. It has a peach-colored cover, a chunky, 1970s-style logo, and a black…
99% InvisibleScience Vs Snakes
More than 100,000 people die every year from snake bites. Snake venom can have up to 200 different toxins inside it and each toxin has a different horrible…
99% InvisibleOops, Our Bad
In the 20th century, humans became very good at the control of nature, but now that we’ve spent some time with the consequences, such as species extinction and…
99% InvisibleThe Megaplex!
Back in the early 1990s, movie theaters weren't that great. The auditoriums were cramped and narrow, and the screen was dim. But in 1995, the AMC Grand 24 in…
- 99% Invisible
Artistic License
Idaho was the first state to slap a slogan on a license plate, “Idaho Potatoes,” which may not seem like a big deal, but it turns out this idea would end up…
99% InvisibleFlorence Nightingale: Data Viz Pioneer
Victorian nurse Florence Nightingale (played in this episode by her distant cousin Helena Bonham Carter) is a hero of modern medicine - but her greatest…
99% InvisibleThe Batman and the Bridge Builder
Mark Bloschock is an engineer from Texas, and in the late 1970s he got a job with the Texas Department of Transportation renovating the Congress Avenue Bridge…
99% Invisible12 Heads from the Garden of Perfect Brightness
The story of the twelve bronze zodiac heads that are at the center of a fight over the repatriation of Chinese cultural heritage. Most believe all such…
99% InvisibleJudas and the Black Messiah, Episode 1: The Chairman
Proximity, 99% Invisible, and Warner Bros. present the “Judas and the Black Messiah Podcast,” an official film companion from the Radiotopia podcast network…
99% InvisibleThe Doom Boom
Bradley Garrett is the author of Bunker: Building for the Times. People have always built underground survival shelters to stay safe from things like plagues…
99% InvisibleJudas and the Black Messiah Trailer from 99% Invisible and Proximity Media
Proximity, 99% Invisible, and Warner Bros. present the “Judas and the Black Messiah Podcast,” an official film companion from the Radiotopia podcast network…
99% InvisibleStuccoed in Time
Santa Fe is famous in part for a particular architectural style, an adobe (mudbrick) look that came to be called Pueblo Revival. This aesthetic combines…
- 99% Invisible
Beneath the Skyway
Cities around the world have distinctive modes of transportation -- the canals of Venice, the double-decker busses of London, and the Twin Cities (of…