99% Invisible
Episodes
As Slow As Possible
09 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When you go to a concert, you might try to get there right when the doors open. Or perhaps you take your time and skip the opening act. But generally,...
The Containment Plan (rebroadcast)
02 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 do...
Backfired: The Vaping Wars
25 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When two Stanford graduate students set out to create a new kind of cigarette that wouldn’t kill them, they didn’t foresee all the obstacles that ...
The Power Broker #6: Mike Schur
21 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is the sixth official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro. This week, Roman Ma...
Category 6
18 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After Hurricane Camille caused widespread death and destruction along the US Gulf Coast in 1969, two scientists created the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane W...
The Los Angeles Leaf Blower Wars
11 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The leaf blower is one of the most hated objects in the modern world. They’re loud, they pollute, and… how important is a leafless lawn anyway? In...
Fact Checking the Supreme Court
04 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For a long time, the Court operated under what was called Legal Formalism. Legal formalism said that the job of any judge or justice was incredibly na...
Uptown Squirrel [update]
28 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In late 2018, two hundred people gathered at The Explorer’s Club in New York City. The building was once a clubhouse for famed naturalists and explo...
The Lost Subways of North America
22 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Los Angeles actually used to have a massive electric railway system in the early 1900s, called the Red Car. Jake Berman, the author of The Lost Subway...
The Power Broker #5: Brandy Zadrozny
18 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is the fifth official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro. This week, Roman Ma...
Rocket Man
14 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the twentieth century, the jetpack became synonymous with the idea of a ‘futuristic society.’ Appearing in cartoons and magazines, it felt like...
It's Howdy Doody Time!
07 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Howdy Doody Show is one of those pieces of 1950s ephemera that has come to symbolize mid-century American childhood. For over a decade, every week...
Towers of Silence: Vulture Conservation
03 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Recently we published an episode called Towers of Silence. It's about how the Parsis in India are grappling with the loss of vultures and how it chang...
Mr. Yuk
30 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Mr. Yuk is a neon green circular sticker with a cartoon face on it. His face is scrunched up with his eyes squeezed tight and his tongue is sticking o...
Towers of Silence
23 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Situated right in downtown Mumbai, India is an area of about 55 acres of dense, overgrown forest. In one of the most populous cities in the world, thi...
The Power Broker #4: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
19 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is the fourth official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro. This week, Roman M...
Anything's Pastable: Eat Sauté Love
16 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week we're featuring an episode from The Sporkful's series on the creation of "Anything's Pastable," Dan Pashman's new pasta cookbook.Dan talks w...
The Society of Ambiance Makers and Elegant Persons
09 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Hailing from central African cities of Brazzaville and Kinshasa, sapeurs have become increasingly recognizable around the world. Since the 1970s, sape...
Chambre de Bonne
02 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A chambre de bonne is usually one small room, on the top floor of a five- or six-story apartment building, and it’s usually just big enough to fit a...
Roman Mars Describes Athens GA As It Is
29 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is the third and final episode in a three-part series of Roman Mars recording on-location guides to the design features and interesting spots in ...
Autism Pleasantville
27 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The Monster Under the Sink
19 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
The Power Broker #3: David Sims
15 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is the third official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro. This week, Roman Ma...
Toyetic
13 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 c...
WARNING: This Podcast Contains Chemicals Known to the State of California to Cause Cancer or Other Reproductive Harm
05 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Intimidating Proposition 65 warnings can be found on all kinds of products manufactured or distributed in the State of California. They can seem rathe...
Roman Mars Describes Santa Fe As It Is
02 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 o...
The Real Book [rebroadcast]
27 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 bla...
Significant Others: A Sneak Peek at the Woman Behind Benedict Arnold’s Betrayal
23 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It’s been said that history is written by the person at the typewriter. But who did the person who made history depend on? Often, it’s impossible ...
You Are What You Watch
21 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 mi...
The Power Broker #2: Jamelle Bouie
16 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is the second official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro.This week, Roman Mar...
The White Castle System of Eating Houses
13 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 –...
Between the Blocks
06 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Seen from above, Sofia, Bulgaria, looks less like a city and more like a forest. Large "interblock park" green spaces between big apartment structures...
Don't Forget to Remember
30 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 Memor...
Roman Mars Describes Chicago As It Is
26 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 --...
The Double Kick
24 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The Power Broker #1: Robert Caro
19 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to our first official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro. Robert Caro happe...
Imitation Nation
16 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Fake cities. Imitation nations. People role-playing as civilians, spies, or enemies, complete with costumes and props. It's all part of an effort coor...
Mini-Stories: Volume 18
09 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 bee...
Another Visit from the Three Santas of Slovenia
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We're revisiting this Christmas classic from 2021. Happy Holidays!Slovenia is a small country in Central Europe nestled between Italy, Austria, Croati...
Mini-Stories: Volume 17
20 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 ab...
Empire of the Sum
13 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 the...
Breaking Down The Power Broker (with Conan O'Brien)
05 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 bu...
The Known Unknown [rebroadcast]
29 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Long Strange Tape
22 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 an...
Home on the Range
15 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 elem...
The Six-Week Cure
07 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the mid-1900s, people flocked to Reno, Nevada -- not for frontier gold or loose slots, but to get out of bad marriages. The city became known as ...
The Fever Tree Hunt
31 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Most heists target gold, jewels or cash. This one targeted illegal seeds. As the British established their sprawling empire across the subcontinent an...
Model Village
24 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, society has dealt with people with dementia and other forms of cognitive decline by storing them away in unstimulating, medicalized envir...
Devolutionary Redesign
17 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
You Ain’t Nothin But a Postmark
10 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The Big Dig
03 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Over its more than 40 year journey from conception to completion, Boston’s Big Dig massive infrastructure project, which rerouted the central highwa...
Devil in the Details
26 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 h...
Cautionary Tales of the Sydney Opera House
19 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 dre...
Blood in the Machine
12 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Whomst Among Us Let the Dogs Out AGAIN
05 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 ther...
Office Space
29 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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.’ Co...
Melanie Speaks
22 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 ove...
Trail Mix: Track Two
15 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Trail Mix
08 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 t...
Cooking with Gas
01 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Back in January, Bloomberg News published a story quoting an obscure government official named Richard Trumka Jr. He works with the Consumer Product S...
The Country of the Blind
25 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 w...
Shade Redux
18 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Chick Tracts
11 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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, o...
In Proximity: Ryan Coogler and Roman Mars
05 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Proximity is a podcast from Proximity Media about craft, career, and creativity.Proximity founder Ryan Coogler talks all about podcasts with Roman ...
Player Piano
27 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 a...
The Frankfurt Kitchen
20 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
The Siren of Scrap Metal
13 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Courtroom Sketch
06 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As electronic news gathering was gaining prominence in the early 20th century, the American Bar Association began to fear its effect on court trials a...
Goodnight Nobody [rebroadcast]
31 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The unlikely battle between the creator of the New York Public Library children's reading room and the beloved children’s classic Goodnight Moon.Goo...
Train Set: Track Three
23 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 S...
Paved Paradise
17 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 ren...
Nuts and Bolts
09 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Craptions
02 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 th...
For Amusement Only (Free Replay)
25 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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, wit...
Dear John and Roman
19 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 w...
For a Dollar and a Dream
11 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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...
De Fiets Is Niets
04 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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. T...
The Panopticon Effect
29 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The Wilderness Tool
21 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Twenty Thousand Hertz- Golden
17 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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% Invis...
A Whale-Oiled Machine
14 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 w...
The Lost Cities of Geo Redux
07 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 ther...
RoboUmp
28 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 diff...
Orange Alternative
22 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The Chinatown Punk Wars
14 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 fierc...
The Day the Music Stopped
08 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Aug. 1, 1942, the nation’s recording studios went silent. Musicians were fed up with the new technologies threatening their livelihoods, so they ...
Six-on-Six Basketball
31 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 p...
The Comrades
24 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 co...
A Sea of Yellow
17 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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 w...
Mini-Stories: Volume 16
10 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
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; th...
Balikbayan Boxes
21 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Mini-Stories: Volume 15
14 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 stru...
The Divided Dial
06 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 somet...
Cougar Town
29 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Wildlife and urban development don’t usually go well together. Roads in particular fracture the habitats of wide-ranging animals. It restricts their...
Super Citizens
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Freedom House Ambulance Service: American Sirens
16 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Train Set: Track Two
09 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Articles of Interest: American Ivy
02 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Articles of Interest is a show about what we wear. Host and producer Avery Trufelman investigates our collectively held beliefs about fashion and expl...
The Safety Bicycle
25 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Walk of Fame
18 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Even if you haven't made the pilgrimage to Southern California, you can probably already picture what the Walk of Fame looks like. It's a 1.3 mile wal...