The 99PI Anniversary Special: 15 for 15
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How does Roman celebrate 99% Invisible’s 15‑year anniversary?
This is ninety nine percent invisible. I'm Roman Mars. So here's the thing. This year marks the 15th anniversary of 99% invisible, which is honestly kind of hard to believe. If 99% invisible were a person, it would be old enough to have a provisional driver's license in some states, or celebrate a quincenera. That's kind of all you can do at age 15 in this country, but still. The first episode of 99% Invisible was released on September 3rd, 2010. And since then, we've had 15 years of stories about design, architecture, and the choices we make that shape our world. 15 years of taking the time to stop and read the plaque. 15 years of you, our listeners, sending us the most incredible observations about the built environment that we never would have noticed on our own.
To mark this milestone, we thought we'd do something a little different. Instead of our usual deep dive into one particular design story, I'm going to answer 15 questions submitted by our listeners and the staff about the show, about the field of design, and about me. And to help me navigate this whole thing, I'm joined by 99 PI producer Vivian Leigh, who will be moderating the questions.
Hi Roman. Happy birthday!
Thank you so much. I'm a little nervous, but um but I think we'll get through this together.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, um Granting me the power to choose these questions was a very bold move on your part. So we'll see how this goes. Um, we got a lot of fun questions. Some of them were submitted through email, some came through social media, um, our Discord server. Oh,
nice.
And a bunch of them I just made up because I thought it'd be really funny for you to answer mic. So yeah, I'm ready to jump in if you are.
I am ready. Let's go for it.
Okay, great. Uh so the first question came from Taylor from New Jersey. Shout out to New Jersey, my second favorite state. Um, but uh Taylor actually has kind of a doozy of a question for you. Um they ask A city hires you to make their residents' lives ten percent better without spending any money. You could only rearrange, remove, or repurpose things that already exist. What do you do?
Without spending any
money? No, no. And you can't you can't create anything. It's basically just Redoing what already exists.
Okay, so I I have one idea. I don't know if it completely fulfills the idea of no money, but if it if you if rearranging, removing, repurposing works, um I feel like all those things involve like a little bit of money, honestly. But like I think that I think them the best way to make a city better would be dedicated rapid bus lanes. Which I think if you have the buses and you have the lanes and you just need to paint them and like, you know, mark them, it it I think it kind of fulfills the mandate of the question. But that would be like regular take every bus you have, school buses, um, uh public transit buses and Just have a lane, have 'em run every ten minutes between places that are important. Um, you will make a city tremendously better.
I don't know if it's really free, but I also like Not to quibble with Taylor, just in general, the whole concept of of like fixing stuff without money is like a thing that I find is like a weird political thing that people talk about that is like, no, we actually throw money at things that we value and that's okay. But I would throw a little bit of money at this. I think it's much cheaper than light rail and various other solutions. It really is a rearrangement of resources and um the emphasis on on making a city a better place. But Rapid, very frequent bus routes between places would be huge. Dedicated bus lanes. That means like they run smoothly because there's no other cars in the lane. I think that's how I'd make a city better.
Almost any city would be made better by that.
Yeah, it's pretty good. Um, so the next question is actually a voice message, so I'm gonna play it for you.
Hey, this is Teya from Seattle, and I'm really excited to congratulate the entire team at 99% Visible and thank you for. being such an awesome part of my life for the past fifteen years and I'm just asking for fifteen more.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How does Roman celebrate 99% Invisible’s 15‑year anniversary?
0:01–7:33
2
What design solution does Roman propose to improve a city without spending money?
7:33–12:57
3
How has Roman’s definition of design evolved over the past 15 years?
12:57–19:41
4
Why does Roman think the Brannock foot‑measuring device deserves a story?
19:41–26:06
5
What would be the ultimate 99% Invisible‑branded merchandise?
26:06–32:26
6
How did a TED talk on flag design influence city flags worldwide?
32:26–39:22
7
Why does Roman consider the focus on efficiency a design hill he’ll die on?
39:22–45:48
8
What’s the latest update on Roman’s twins and the show’s early ads?
45:48–50:51