99% Invisible
Episodes
Vuvuzela
11 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 Af...
Wickedest Sound
04 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 an...
Tale of the Jackalope
28 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The magical mythical "jackalope" is a essentially a horned rabbit, with antlers of different sizes and shapes. The jackalope is a mascot of the Americ...
President Clinton Interviews Roman Mars
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On this special feature episode, President Bill Clinton interviews 99% Invisible host and creator Roman Mars.Roman Mars has spent his career chronicli...
Search and Ye Might Find
14 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 abo...
Monumental Diplomacy
06 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In downtown Windhoek, Namibia -- at the intersection of Fidel Castro Street and Robert Mugabe Avenue -- there's an imposing gold building with an affe...
First Errand
30 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 th...
Bleep!
23 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 opti...
What Roman Mars Can Learn About Con Law- The Longest Week
18 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the final week of the most recent term, the Supreme Court decided to limit one constitutional right (abortion) and expand another constitutional ...
Re:peat
10 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
99% Vernacular: Volume 3
03 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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% Vernacular: Volume 2
26 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
99% Vernacular: Volume 1
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 reg...
Say Aloe to My Little Frond
12 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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. ...
The Octagon House
05 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
99% Invisible producer emeritus Avery Trufelman traveled from New York to San Francisco recently, and took host Roman Mars to see an unusually shaped ...
Hometown Village
28 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 w...
The Rights of Rice and Future of Nature
21 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 i...
Meet Us by the Fountain
14 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 F...
Flag Days: Unfolding a Moment
07 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Divining Provenance
01 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Priceless cultural artifacts have been plundered and sold for hundreds of years. You can find these relics in museums and in private collections. In r...
Inheriting Froebel's Gifts
24 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 educati...
The Missing Middle
18 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Downtown Toronto has a dense core of tall, glassy buildings along the waterfront of Lake Ontario. Outside of that, lots short single family homes spra...
Train Set
10 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 gre...
Roman Mars on Blank Check with Griffin and David
06 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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! ...
Pandemic Tracking and the Future of Data
04 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 hindere...
It’s a Small Aisle After All
26 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 "worl...
Atlas Obscura
20 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 t...
Rumble Strip
13 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 hall...
Murder Most Fowl
05 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 t...
Dear Hank and John and Roman
30 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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? Ho...
Grid Locked
22 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 pe...
Natalie de Blois: To Tell the Truth
15 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Natalie de Blois contributed to some of the most iconic Modernist works created for corporate America, all while raising four children. After leaving ...
The Future of the Final Mile
11 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 D...
Broken Heart Park
08 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 positio...
According to Need wins duPont-Columbia Award
01 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Columbia Journalism School recently announced the 16 winners of the 2022 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, including According to Need,...
Art Imitates Art
22 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 paint...
Call of Duty: Free
16 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Reaction Offices and the Future of Work
09 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 mis...
Rock Paper Scissors Bus
02 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 a...
The Punisher Skull
25 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 i...
Mini-Stories : Volume 14
19 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Mini-Stories : Volume 13
12 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We're kicking off the new year at 99pi with a fresh installment of mini-stories, including: a strange collision of mundane infrastructure and politica...
Mini-Stories : Volume 12
22 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 i...
The Three Santas of Slovenia
15 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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, an...
The Epic of Collier Heights
07 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For Black Americans, Collier Heights became a suburban jewel in the postwar South spanning thousands of acres and packed with nature. Just as amazing ...
Alphabetical Order
01 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Cute Little Monstrosities of Nature
23 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
The Weight
17 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Shirley Cards
10 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 prio...
Finding Julia Morgan
02 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Born in 1872, American architect and engineer Julia Morgan designed hundreds of buildings over her prolific career, famous for her work on incredible ...
Fifty-Four Forty or Fight
26 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 t...
I Can't Believe It's Pink Margarine
19 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 var...
Changing Stripes
12 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Rioters carried many familiar flags during the January 6th insurrection at the United States Capitol -- Confederate, MAGA, as well as some custom-made...
The House that Came in the Mail Again
05 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Sears & Roebuck Mail Order Catalog was nearly omnipresent in early 20th century American life. By 1908, one fifth of Americans were subscribers. ...
Corpse, Corps, Horse and Worse
28 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 E...
Yankee Pyramids
21 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Presidential libraries are tributes to greatness, "[a] self-congratulatory, almost fictional account of someone's achievements, where all the blemishe...
Real Fake Bridges
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 arou...
Model Organism
07 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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, includin...
Full Spectrum
31 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
A Field Guide to Water
17 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What does water mean to you? In this feature, author Bonnie Tsui (Why We Swim), actress Joy Bryant, submarine pilot Erika Bergman, figure skater Ellad...
War, Famine, Pestilence, and Design
10 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food
04 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 coo...
The Lows of High Tech
27 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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, sh...
Hanko
20 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 r...
Stuff the British Stole
14 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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. The...
Mine!
29 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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. S...
Katie Mingle's Right to Roam
23 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We revisit Katie Mingle's Right to Roam episode as we say goodbyeIn the United Kingdom, the freedom to walk through private land is known as “the ri...
Flag Days: The Red, the Black & the Green
15 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Flag Days: Good Luck, True South
08 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 t...
The Clinch
02 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 unpa...
Pipe Dreams
25 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Matters of Time
19 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 o...
Tanz Tanz Revolution
11 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Abandoned Ships
04 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 stu...
Curb Cuts (Repeat)
28 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 s...
La Brega in Levittown
20 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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-Burges...
Welcome to Jurassic Art Redux
14 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 din...
The Real Book
07 Apr 2021
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...
Science Vs Snakes
30 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 hor...
Oops, Our Bad
23 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 ext...
The Megaplex!
16 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 Gran...
Artistic License
09 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 wo...
Florence Nightingale: Data Viz Pioneer
02 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Victorian nurse Florence Nightingale (played in this episode by her distant cousin Helena Bonham Carter) is a hero of modern medicine - but her greate...
The Batman and the Bridge Builder
23 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 Aven...
12 Heads from the Garden of Perfect Brightness
16 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 suc...
Judas and the Black Messiah, Episode 1: The Chairman
12 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Proximity, 99% Invisible, and Warner Bros. present the “Judas and the Black Messiah Podcast,” an official film companion from the Radiotopia podca...
The Doom Boom
09 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Bradley Garrett is the author of Bunker: Building for the Times. People have always built underground survival shelters to stay safe from things like ...
Judas and the Black Messiah Trailer from 99% Invisible and Proximity Media
08 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Proximity, 99% Invisible, and Warner Bros. present the “Judas and the Black Messiah Podcast,” an official film companion from the Radiotopia podca...
Stuccoed in Time
02 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Santa Fe is famous in part for a particular architectural style, an adobe (mudbrick) look that came to be called Pueblo Revival. This aesthetic combin...
Beneath the Skyway
26 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Cities around the world have distinctive modes of transportation -- the canals of Venice, the double-decker busses of London, and the Twin Cities (of ...
Mini-Stories: Volume 11
20 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this set of short stories, 99% Invisible producers talked with host Roman Mars about everything from the Fresh Air Movement to the lost Lenin in An...
Mini-Stories: Volume 10
12 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this set of short stories, 99% Invisible producers talked with host Roman Mars about everything from climate-changing sheep to the persistent urban...
Mini-Stories: Volume 9
22 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Each year, 99% Invisible producers select short design stories to talk about with host Roman Mars. Some of these were just too brief to make into full...
Roman Mars on Bullseye with Jesse Thorn
18 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Roman Mars joins Jesse Thorn on Bullseye this week to talk about life before podcasting, and what decades in radio has taught him. Roman has worked in...
Chapter 5: Housing Finally
15 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
If homelessness is the problem, housing is the solution. But it’s not always that simple. Kate Cody has been living in her encampment community for ...
Chapter 4: The List
11 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When Tulicia Lee tried to get help with housing, she was essentially put on a big long list with a bunch of other homeless people. If you live in the ...
Chapter 3: Housing First
08 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1980's, a psychologist named Sam Tsemberis was working with mentally ill homeless people on the streets of New York. Sometimes, when he thought...
Chapter 2: The Hotline
04 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Katie Mingle heard a lot about 211 doing this reporting. Not just from Tulicia Lee who called a bunch of times, but from everyone—from homeless peop...
Chapter 1: Tulicia
01 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When we think about homelessness, we often have a certain image in our mind—people pushing shopping carts, or big sprawling tent encampments. But fo...
According to Need: Prologue
01 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The way homelessness has exploded in California over the last decade, you’d think there was no system in place to address it. But there is one -- it...