99% Invisible
Episodes
Devil’s Rope
18 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In the mid 1800s, not many (non-native) Americans had ever been west of the Mississippi. When Frederick Law Olmstead visited the west in the 1850s, he...
Coin Check
11 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The United States Military is not known for being touchy-feely. There’s not much hugging or head-patting, and superiors don’t always have the au...
Palm Reading
04 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Reports of palm theft have appeared in LA, San Diego, and Texas; palm rustling also gets a mention in Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief. To under...
PDX Carpet
24 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Portlanders have a tradition when visiting their airport: taking a picture of their feet. It’s not to show off their shoes, but rather, what’s und...
Game Over (R)
18 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
A few months before the end of the world, everyone was saying their goodbyes. The world that was ending was The Sims Online, an online version of The ...
Guerrilla Public Service
11 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
At some point in your life you’ve probably encountered a problem in the built world where the fix was obvious to you. Maybe a door that opened the w...
La Mascotte
03 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The idea of the mascot came to America by way of a popular French opera from the 1880s called La Mascotte. The opera is about a down-on-his luck farme...
Under The Moonlight
28 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In 1885, Austin, Texas was terrorized by a serial killer known as the Servant Girl Annihilator. The murderer was never actually found, but he c...
Of Mice And Men
21 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
If you are looking at a computer screen, your right hand is probably resting on a mouse. To the left of that mouse (or above, if you’re on a lapto...
The Sizzle
14 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The first trademark for a sound in the United States was issued in 1978 to NBC for their chimes. MGM has a sound trademark for their roaring lion,...
Penn Station Sucks
07 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
New Yorkers are known to disagree about a lot of things. Who’s got the best pizza? What’s the fastest subway route? Yankees or Mets? But all 8.5 m...
Mooallempalooza
31 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
As you probably know, 99% Invisible is a show about the built world, about things manufactured by humans. We don’t tend to do stories about animals...
Octothorpe
17 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
If you want to follow conversation threads relating to this show on social media—whether Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, Tumblr—you know to look ...
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
10 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Hanging in the garage of Fire Station #6 in Livermore, California, there’s a small, pear-shaped light bulb. It is glowing right now. This lightbulb ...
Inflatable Men
03 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
You see them on street corners, at gas stations, at shopping malls. You see them at blowout sales and grand openings of all kinds. Their wacky faces h...
And The Winner Is
26 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
There’s a little trophy shop called Aardvark Laser Engraving down the street from our office in Oakland. Its small but bustling, and its windows a...
Three Records from Sundown
19 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
This week on the show we’re presenting one of our favorite radio features, “Three Records from Sundown,” about singer Nick Drake. The documenta...
Vexillonaire
12 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Vexillologists—those who study flags—tend to fall into one of two schools of thought. The first is one that focuses on history, category, and usag...
Edge of Your Seat
04 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
“A Chair is a difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier.” — Mies van der Rohe. The chair presents an interesting design challenge, becaus...
O-U-I-J-A
28 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The Ouija board is so simple and iconic that it looks like it comes from another time, or maybe another realm. The game is not as ancient as it was de...
Good Bread
22 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The first print advertisement for Wonder Bread came out before the bread itself. It stated only that “a wonder” was coming. In a lot of ways, the ...
Kickstart Radiotopia- A Storytelling Revolution
19 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
When you support Radiotopia, you are making sure 99% Invisible can keep coming to you weekly and you’ll be supporting our entire collective of awar...
Lights Out
14 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On July 13th, 1977, lightning struck an electricity transmission line in New York City, causing the line’s automatic circuit breaker to kick in. The...
For Amusement Only
07 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone has tried it at some point. The authorities started turning a blind eye years ago, but it wasn’t officially legalized until the summer of 2...
The Straight Line Is A Godless Line
30 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Straight lines form the core of our built environment. Building in straight lines makes predicting costs and calculating structural loads easier, sinc...
Port of Dallas
24 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
There’s a photograph we have tacked to our studio at 99% Invisible HQ. The photo, taken 1899, shows three men, all looking very fashionable, suspend...
Castle on the Park
16 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On the southwest corner of Central Park West and 106th Street in New York City, there’s an enormous castle. It takes up the whole east end of the bl...
Genesis Object
10 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In the beginning, there was design. Before any other human discipline, even before the dawn of mankind its self, design was a practice passed down fro...
Holdout
02 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Around 2005, a Seattle neighborhood called Ballard started to see unprecedented growth. Condominiums and apartment buildings were sprouting up all ove...
Thomassons
26 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Cities, like living things, evolve slowly over time. Buildings and structures get added and renovated and removed, and in this process, bits and piece...
Hacking IKEA
19 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
IKEA hacking is the practice of buying things from IKEA and reengineering—or “hacking”—them to become customized, more functional, and often j...
The Sound of Sports
12 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Way back in October 2011 (see episode #38, true believers!), we broadcast a short excerpt of a radio documentary produced by Peregrine Andrews about...
Walk This Way
05 Aug 2014
Contributed by Lukas
As humans have developed cities and built environments, we have also needed to develop ways to find our way through them. Sam Greenspan went on a wayf...
Duplitecture
29 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The best knock-offs in the world are in China. There are plenty of fake designer handbags and Rolexes, but China’s knock-offs go way beyond fashion....
Longbox
22 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Reporter Whitney Jones argues that R.E.M.’s Out of Time is the most politically significant album in the history of the United States. Because of it...
Snowflake
15 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Well before the early 1500s, when Sir Thomas Moore first coined the term “Utopia,” people have been thinking about how to design their ideal commu...
Good Egress
08 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
When designing a commercial structure, there is one safety component that must be designed right into the building from the start: egress. “Egress...
Cold War Kids
01 Jul 2014
Contributed by Lukas
During the 1961 Berlin Crisis—one of the various moments in the cold war in which we came frighteningly close to engaging in actual war with the Sov...
Skyjacking
24 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The term “hijacking” goes back to prohibition days, when gangsters would rob moonshine trucks saying, “Hold your hands high, Jack!” However, i...
Feet of Engineering
17 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
As a fashion object and symbol, the high heel shoe is weighted with meaning. It’s also weighted with the wearer’s entire body weight. The stiletto...
Song Exploder
10 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
99% Invisible presents Song Exploder. A song is a product of design. It’s difficult to create an original melody, but that’s only the blueprint. ...
Clean Trains
03 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In just about every movie set in New York City in the 1970s and 80s there’s an establishing shot with a graffiti-covered subway. For city officials,...
Breaking the Bank
27 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
When I go into a bank, especially if I have to stand in line waiting to make a deposit, my mind wanders. And one of the first place it wanders to is: ...
Cow Tunnels
20 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The westernmost part of Manhattan, between 34th and 39th street, is pretty industrial. There’s a bus depot, a ferry terminal, and a steady stream of...
Ten Thousand Years
13 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In 1990, the federal government invited a group of geologists, linguists, astrophysicists, architects, artists, and writers to the New Mexico desert, ...
Monumental Dilemma
06 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
About ten miles north of Concord, New Hampshire, off of interstate 93 there’s a little island with a great, big monument on it. The monument depicts...
Young Ruin
29 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
If you’ve wandered around Machu Picchu, or Stonehenge, or the Colosseum, or even snuck into that abandoned house on the edge of town, you know the p...
Masters of the Uni-verse
22 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Uniforms matter. When it comes to sports, they might be the only thing to which we’re actually loyal. Sports uniforms are packaging. But unlike any ...
Structural Integrity
15 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
When it was built in 1977, Citicorp Center (later renamed Citigroup Center, now called 601 Lexington) was, at 59 stories, the seventh-tallest building...
Title TK
08 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The name is important. It’s the first thing of any product you use or buy or see. The tip of the spear. You are bombarded by thousands of names ever...
Barcodes
01 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
When George Laurer goes to the grocery store, he doesn’t tell the check-out people that he invented the barcode, but his wife used to point it out. ...
Call Now
25 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
When it’s three o’clock in the morning and everything is going wrong in your life, there’s a certain kind of ad you might see on basic cable. La...
The Fancy Shape
18 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Quatrefoil is the name of the four-lobed cloverleaf shape. It’s everywhere: adorning Gothic cathedrals, more modern churches, Rhode Island mansions,...
One Man is An Island
11 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
A few years ago, reporter Sean Cole was working on a radio story and needed to interview the rapper Busta Rhymes. Sean was living in Boston at the ti...
Tunnel 57
05 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
At its peak, the Berlin Wall was 100 miles long. Today only about a mile is left standing. Compared with other famous walls in history, this wall had ...
UTBAPH
25 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
It started with some Pittsburgh humor. Pittsburgh-based comedian Tom Muisal does a bit about a GPS unit that can give directions in “Pittsburghese.”...
Icon for Access
18 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
There is a beauty to a universal standard. The idea that people across the world can agree that when they interact with one specific thing, everyone w...
Cover Story
11 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
You know the saying: you can’t judge a book by its cover. With magazines, it’s pretty much the opposite. The cover of a magazine is the unified id...
Higher And Higher
04 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Like the best of these stories, the two bitter rivals started out as best friends: William Van Alen and Craig Severance. They were business partners. ...
The View From The 79th Floor
15 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
On July 28, 1945, an airplane crashed into the Empire State Building. A B-25 bomber was flying a routine mission, chartering servicemen from Massachus...
Six Stories- the memory palace
03 Jan 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Elevators are old. They would have to be. Because it is in our nature to rise. History is full of things that lift other things. In ancient Greece, an...
Numbers Stations
20 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
If you tune around on a shortwave radio, you might stumble across a voice reciting an endless stream of numbers. Just numbers, all day, everyday. Thes...
DIY Space Suit
03 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Cameron Smith is building a space suit in his apartment. He’s not an astronaut. He’s not even an engineer. Cameron Smith is an archaeologist–on ...
Future Screens are Mostly Blue
21 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
We have seen the future, and the future is mostly blue. Or, put another way: in our representations of the future in science fiction movies, blue seem...
Unbuilt
13 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
There is an allure in unbuilt structures: the utopian, futuristic transports, the impossibly tall skyscrapers, even the horrible highways, all capture...
Revolving Doors
06 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
The story goes like this: Theophilus Van Kannel hated chivalry. There was nothing he despised more than trying to walk in or out of a building, and lo...
All the Buildings
29 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
I love those moments when you’re walking in your neighborhood and suddenly nothing is familiar. In a good way. Sean Cole began seeing his neighborho...
Kickstart Season 4 of 99% Invisible- Weekly Episodes
23 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
99% Invisible started as a side project I made in my bedroom at night, and after two years of making the program, I turned to Kickstarter to see if I ...
Wild Ones Live
14 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
We have one cardinal rule on 99% Invisible: No cardinals. Meaning, we deal with the built world, not the natural world. So, when I read Jon Mooallem’...
Strowger and Purple Reign Redux
02 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
If you are an undertaker in 1878 Kansas City, and you learn that your competitor’s wife works as a telephone switchboard operator and has been diver...
Bubble Houses
17 Sep 2013
Contributed by Lukas
If you were a movie star in the market for a mansion in 1930s Los Angeles, there was a good chance you might call on Wallace Neff. Neff wasn’t just ...
The Broadcast Clock
03 Sep 2013
Contributed by Lukas
There’s a term that epitomizes what we radio producers aspire to create: the “driveway moment.” It’s when a story is so good that you literall...
I Heart NY, TM
22 Aug 2013
Contributed by Lukas
By now, the story is well known. A man sits in the backseat of a cab, sketching on a notepad as night falls over a crumbling city. He scribbles the le...
Reversal of Fortune
09 Aug 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Chicago’s biggest design achievement probably isn’t one of its amazing skyscrapers, but the Chicago River, a waterway disguised as a remnant of th...
Noble Effort
29 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
If you grew up watching Warner Brothers cartoons, you might remember seeing the name Chuck Jones in big letters in the opening credits. Chuck Jones di...
Ode to Ladislav Sutnar plus Trading Places with Planet Money
15 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
An ode to an information designer who made life a little bit easier for millions and millions of people: Ladislav Sutnar, the man who put parentheses ...
Heyoon
02 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Alex Goldman was a misfit. Bored and disaffected and angry, he longed for a place to escape to. And then he found H...
The Man of Tomorrow
20 Jun 2013
Contributed by Lukas
I’m willing to concede from the get-go that I might be wrong about the entire premise of this story, but Superman has never really worked for me as ...
Rebar and the Alvord Lake Bridge
07 Jun 2013
Contributed by Lukas
There’s something about rebar that fascinates me. If nothing else because there are very few things that invoke a fear of being skewered. My preoccu...
An Architect’s Code
28 May 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Lawyers have an ethics code. Journalists have an ethics code. Architects do, too. According to Ethical Standard 1.4 of the American Institute of Archi...
The Symphony of Sirens plus Soviet Design
08 May 2013
Contributed by Lukas
For the ancient Greeks, sirens were mythical creatures who sang out to passing sailors from rocks in the sea. Their music was so beautiful, it was sai...
No Armed Bandit
30 Apr 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Americans have always had an uneasy relationship with gambling. To circumvent anti-gambling laws in the US, early slot machines masqueraded as vending...
Game Changer
15 Apr 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Regardless of how you feel about basketball, you’ve got to appreciate the way it can bring groups of strangers together to share moments of pure adu...
The Modern Moloch
04 Apr 2013
Contributed by Lukas
On the streets of early 20th Century America, nothing moved faster than 10 miles per hour. Responsible parents would tell their children, “Go outsid...
Secret Staircases
21 Mar 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Wherever there is sufficient demand to move between two points of differing elevation, there are stairs. In some hilly neighborhoods of California–i...
Hand Painted Signs
08 Mar 2013
Contributed by Lukas
There was a time when every street sign, every billboard, and every window display was made by a sign artist with a paint kit and an arsenal of squirr...
The Zanzibar and Other Building Poems
18 Feb 2013
Contributed by Lukas
There comes a time in the life of a modern city where it begins to grow up–literally. Santiago, the capital of Chile, has been going through a treme...
New Old Town
05 Feb 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Like many cities in Central Europe, Warsaw is made up largely of grey, ugly, communist block-style architecture. Except for one part: The Old Town. Wa...
In and Out of LOVE
23 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Though its officially name is JFK Plaza, the open space near Philadelphia’s City Hall is more commonly known as LOVE Park. With its sleek granite be...
The Great Red Car Conspiracy
11 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
When Eric Molinsky lived in Los Angeles, he kept hearing this story about a bygone transportation system called the Red Car. The Red Car, he was told,...
The Brief and Tumultuous Life of the New UC Logo
31 Dec 2012
Contributed by Lukas
If you’re not from California, or missed this bit of news, the University of California has a new logo. Or rather had a new logo. To be more precise...
Built for Speed
12 Dec 2012
Contributed by Lukas
I want you to conjure an image in your mind of the white stripes that divide the lanes of traffic going the same direction on a major highway. How lon...
Broken Window
29 Nov 2012
Contributed by Lukas
When Melissa Lee was growing up in Hastings-on-Hudson, a small town in upstate New York, there were only so many fun things to do. One was buying geod...
Kowloon Walled City
19 Nov 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Kowloon Walled City was the densest place in the world, ever. By its peak in the 1990s, the 6.5 acre Kowloon Walled City was home to at least 33,000 p...
Razzle Dazzle
05 Nov 2012
Contributed by Lukas
When most people think of camouflage they think of blending in with the environment, but camouflage can also take the opposite approach. It has long b...
Derelict Dome
25 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
In the Cape Cod town of Woods Hole, buildings are not usually dome-shaped. Producer Katie Klocksin was pretty surprised when she came across one. Kati...
The Political Stage
12 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
On this special edition of 99% Invisible, we joined forces with Andrea Seabrook of DecodeDC to investigate all the thought that goes into the most min...
Q2
02 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Benjamen Walker had a theory that priority queues are changing the American experience of waiting in line. So he visited amusement parks, highways, an...
A Series of Tubes
20 Sep 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Pneumatic (adj.): of, or pertaining to, air, gases, or wind. In the world before telephone, radio, and email, the tasks of transmitting information ...
BackStory- Heyward Shepherd Memorial
10 Sep 2012
Contributed by Lukas
I only recently started listening to BackStory with the American History Guys, but it’s already earned a top spot in my crowded weekly rotation. Wit...