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99% Invisible
Description

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
  • 2024 / 3 / 27
    575- Autism Plesantville

    A few years back, journalist Lauren Ober was diagnosed with autism. She then made a podcast about her experience called The Loudest Girl in the World. And she found herself imagining a fantasy world where...

  • 2024 / 3 / 27
    575- Autism Pleasantville

    A few years back, journalist Lauren Ober was diagnosed with autism. She then made a podcast about her experience called The Loudest Girl in the World. And she found herself imagining a fantasy world where...

  • 2024 / 3 / 19
    574- The Monster Under the Sink

    In the middle of the 20th century, the small town of Jasper, Indiana did something that no other city had done before: they made garbage illegal. The city would still collect some things, like soup cans and...

  • 2024 / 3 / 15
    The Power Broker #03: David Sims

    This is the third official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro. Blank Check podcast co-host and The Atlantic movie critic David Sims is our...

  • 2024 / 3 / 13
    573- Toyetic

    This year marks the 40th anniversary of a lot of landmarks in pop culture, especially sci-fi and fantasy. So many franchises were born in 1984. Some came to define the genre or invent new genres. The great...

  • 2024 / 3 / 5
    572- WARNING: This Podcast Contains Chemicals Known to the State of California to Cause Cancer or Other Reproductive Harm

    Intimidating Proposition 65 warnings can be found on all kinds of products manufactured or distributed in the State of California. They can seem rather terrifying at first, but within the state, they are...

  • 2024 / 3 / 2
    Roman Mars Describes Santa Fe As It Is

    Roman Mars is on a mission to describe the cities that shaped who he is and how he thinks about design. Next up, Santa Fe. Santa Fe wasn’t always on the proverbial map — in fact, the Santa Fe railroad just...

  • 2024 / 2 / 27
    438- The Real Book [rebroadcast]

    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 plastic binding. It’s delightfully...

  • 2024 / 2 / 21
    571- You Are What You Watch

    What we see on screen has this way of influencing our perception of the world, which makes sense because the average American spends 2 hours and 51 minutes watching movies and TV each day. That’s a whopping...

  • 2024 / 2 / 16
    The Power Broker #2: Jamelle Bouie

    This is the second official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro. New York Times political columnist Jamelle Bouie is our book club guest.On...

  • 2024 / 2 / 13
    570- The White Castle System of Eating Houses

    White Castle has its own take on fast food hamburgers. For starters, the patties are square, with five holes in each patty. And they’re small, too –- two-and-a-half inch sliders. Just big enough to fit into...

  • 2024 / 2 / 6
    569- Between the Blocks

    Seen from above, Sofia, Bulgaria, looks less like a city and more like a forest. Large "interblock park" green spaces between big apartment structures are a defining characteristic of the city. They're not so...

  • 2024 / 1 / 30
    568- Don't Forget to Remember

    When a highway gets made, there’s a clear and consistent process for doing so. Not so, public memorials. From the Vietnam Wall to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, it’s always different. Sometimes...

  • 2024 / 1 / 26
    Roman Mars Describes Chicago As It Is

    A few years ago, at the very start of the pandemic, Roman Mars wrote an episode of 99pi in which he simply talked about design details in his house -- realizing that he, like the audience, didn't have many...

  • 2024 / 1 / 24
    567- The Double Kick

    Watch a skate video today, and you'll notice how similarly shaped the boards are. It’s called the “popsicle” design, because the deck is narrow in the middle and rounded off at both ends, like a popsicle...

  • 2024 / 1 / 19
    Power Broker #01: Robert Caro

    Welcome to our first official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro. Robert Caro happens to be our special guest for this episode and you do not...

  • 2024 / 1 / 16
    566- Imitation Nation

    Fake cities. Imitation nations. People role-playing as civilians, spies, or enemies, complete with costumes and props. It's all part of an effort coordinated and constructed by the U.S. military to prepare...

  • 2024 / 1 / 9
    565- Mini-Stories: Volume 18

    Our second and final set of mini-stories for the season: We'll be covering upside-down construction, the linguistics of filler and a fire that has been burning for decades.Check out Lizzie No's latest album...

  • 2023 / 12 / 26
    470- Another Visit from the Three Santas of Slovenia

    We're revisiting this Christmas classic from 2021. Happy Holidays!Slovenia is a small country in Central Europe nestled between Italy, Austria, Croatia and Hungary. It's a land of snowy white peaks, green...

  • 2023 / 12 / 20
    564- Mini-Stories: Volume 17

    It's the most wonderful time of the year. It's mini-stories season! Gather the kids around the fire because We have a year-end mix of short stories about a rogue architect, spooky kitchens, a hundred year old...

  • 2023 / 12 / 13
    563- Empire of the Sum

    Keeping track of numbers has always been part of what makes us human. So at some point along the way, we created a tool to help us keep count, and then we gave that tool a name. We called it: a calculator....

  • 2023 / 12 / 5
    562- Breaking Down The Power Broker (with Conan O'Brien)

    Today's episode features #1 Robert Caro superfan, Conan O'Brien.The Power Broker by Robert Caro is a biography of Robert Moses, who is said to have built more structures and moved more earth than anyone in...

  • 2023 / 11 / 29
    344- The Known Unknown [rebroadcast]

    Roman note: This is one of my favorite episodes of all time. Should be a movie. Enjoy!The tradition of the Tomb of the Unknowns goes back only about a century, but it has become one of the most solemn and...

  • 2023 / 11 / 22
    561- Long Strange Tape

    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...

  • 2023 / 11 / 15
    560- Home on the Range

    In a lot of ways, Lincoln Heights, Ohio, sounds just like any other suburb. If you walk around town, you’ll hear kids playing outside the local elementary school. You’ll hear the highway that takes commuters...

  • 2023 / 11 / 7
    559- The Six-Week Cure

    In the mid-1900s, people flocked to Reno, Nevada -- not for frontier gold or loose slots, but to get out of bad marries. The city became known as the "Divorce Capital of the World." For much of modern...

  • 2023 / 10 / 31
    558- The Fever Tree Hunt

    Most heists target gold, jewels or cash. This one targeted illegal seeds. As the British established their sprawling empire across the subcontinent and beyond, they encountered a formidable adversary —...

  • 2023 / 10 / 24
    557- Model Village

    For decades, society has dealt with people with dementia and other forms of cognitive decline by storing them away in unstimulating, medicalized environments. But around the world, a new architectural...

  • 2023 / 10 / 17
    328- Devolutionary Redesign

    It’s hard to overstate just how important record album art was to music in the days before people downloaded everything. Visuals were a key part of one's experience with a record or tape or CD. The design of...

  • 2023 / 10 / 10
    556- You Ain’t Nothin But a Postmark

    Over a decade after Elvis Presley’s death, the king of rock & roll took over headlines once again as Americans weighed in on which portrait of Elvis would be forever immortalized on a 29 cent US postage...

  • 2023 / 10 / 3
    555- The Big Dig

    Over its more than 40 year journey from conception to completion, Boston’s Big Dig massive infrastructure project, which rerouted the central highway in the heart of the city, encountered every hurdle...

  • 2023 / 9 / 26
    554- Devil in the Details

    This week we have two stories featuring the devil.An infamous "training video" teaching cops how to spot and stop "satanic crimes." And a stretch of highway with the misfortune of being officially named US...

  • 2023 / 9 / 19
    553- Cautionary Tales of the Sydney Opera House

    The Sydney Opera House is one of the most iconic and distinctive buildings in the world. It took a relative newcomer and architectural outsider to dream it up, but the saga of making this world heritage...

  • 2023 / 9 / 12
    552- Blood in the Machine

    Brian Merchant is a tech reporter, and he'd been covering the industry for years when he started to notice a term that kept coming up. When he wrote a story that was critical of tech, he'd be accused of being...

  • 2023 / 9 / 5
    389- Whomst Among Us Let the Dogs Out AGAIN

    All kinds of songs get stuck in your head. Famous pop tunes from when you were a kid, album cuts you've listened to over and over again. And then there's a category of memorable songs—the ones that we all...

  • 2023 / 8 / 29
    551- Office Space

    In most big cities, there’s a housing crisis. And empty office buildings are creating a different crisis known to urbanists as a ‘doom loop.’ Converting an office into housing can solve both of these crises...

  • 2023 / 8 / 22
    550- Melanie Speaks

    The story of a voice training VHS tape that helped trans women at a time when other resources were hard to access.The way a person's voice changes over time feels like a simple, and overlooked act of magic....

  • 2023 / 8 / 15
    549- Trail Mix: Track Two

    Welcome to our second episode of short stories all about what may be the original designed object: the trail. If you haven’t heard the first episode yet you should totally go back and listen. It’s a lot of...

  • 2023 / 8 / 8
    548- Trail Mix

    We deconstruct and examine what might be the original designed object-- the humble trail. We discuss how park trails are designed, what makes a good trail, and...what even is a trail anyway?Trail Mix

  • 2023 / 8 / 1
    547- Cooking with Gas

    Back in January, Bloomberg News published a story quoting an obscure government official named Richard Trumka Jr. He works with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which regulates stuff like furniture and...

  • 2023 / 7 / 25
    546- The Country of the Blind

    Andrew Leland grew up with full vision, but starting in his teenage years, his sight began to degrade from the outside in, such that he now sees the world as if through a narrow tube. Soon—but without knowing...

  • 2023 / 7 / 18
    545- Shade Redux

    This past May, the city of Los Angeles rolled out a brand new, state-of-the art feature for bus shelters. It’s called La Sombrita. La Sombrita is a metal screen that’s intended to provide shade for the...

  • 2023 / 7 / 11
    544- Chick Tracts

    In the 1980s, the little Christian comic books known as Chick Tracts were EVERYWHERE. You’d find them in movie theaters and bus station bathrooms, on subways, and all over shopping malls. People would slip...

  • 2023 / 7 / 5
    543- In Proximity: Ryan Coogler and Roman Mars

    In Proximity is a podcast from Proximity Media about craft, career, and creativity.Proximity founder Ryan Coogler talks all about podcasts with Roman Mars, host and creator of 99% Invisible, a sound-rich...

  • 2023 / 6 / 27
    542- Player Piano

    This week we're featuring an episode of The Last ArchiveThe Last Archive is a history show. Our evidence is the evidence of history, the evidence of archives. Manuscripts, photographs, letters and diaries,...

  • 2023 / 6 / 20
    541- The Frankfurt Kitchen

    After World War I, in Frankfurt, Germany, the city government was taking on a big project. A lot of residents were in dire straits, and in the second half of the 1920s, the city built over 10,000 public...

  • 2023 / 6 / 13
    540- The Siren of Scrap Metal

    Amid the noisy bustle of Mexico City, there is a particularly iconic sound echoing on repeat in the background. This recording blares from trucks that cruise the streets all across this massive city. The...

  • 2023 / 6 / 6
    539- Courtroom Sketch

    As electronic news gathering was gaining prominence in the early 20th century, the American Bar Association began to fear its effect on court trials and adopted something called Canon 35. This condemned the...

  • 2023 / 5 / 31
    415- Goodnight Nobody [rebroadcast]

    The unlikely battle between the creator of the New York Public Library children's reading room and the beloved children’s classic Goodnight Moon.Goodnight Nobody

  • 2023 / 5 / 23
    538- Train Set: Track Three

    Happy National Train Day, everyone – for those of you who missed it: that was May 13th this year. A year ago, we started down this path with Train Set: Track One, which gave way to Track Two …and now, here we...