99% Invisible

By Roman Mars

Arts Design

What's 99% Invisible about?

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.
A proud member of Radiotopia, from PRX. Learn more at radiotopia.fm.

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427- Mini-Stories: Volume 11

01.20.2021

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 Antarctica. Mini-Stories: Volume 11

99% Invisible episodes:

01.20.2021 427- Mini-Stories: Volume 11 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 Antarctica. Mini-Stories: Volume 11
01.12.2021 426- Mini-Stories: Volume 10 In this set of short stories, 99% Invisible producers talked with host Roman Mars about everything from climate-changing sheep to the persistent urban legend behind the invention of a space pen. Mini-Stories: Volume 10 99% Invisible’s Impact Design coverage is ...
12.22.2020 425- Mini-Stories: Volume 9 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 99pi episodes, but many also reveal aspects of how we find ideas for ...
12.18.2020 Roman Mars on Bullseye with Jesse Thorn Roman Mars joins Jesse Thorne on Bullseye this week to talk about life before podcasting, and what decades in radio has taught him. Roman has worked in podcasts and radio for decades at this point, but his career didn't start ...
12.15.2020 Chapter 5: Housing Finally 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 a long time. And there’s no guarantee she’ll be able to make the transition inside, ...
12.11.2020 Chapter 4: The List 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 U.S., your community probably has a list like this too. ...
12.08.2020 Chapter 3: Housing First 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 it was necessary to keep someone safe, Sam would have people committed to a psychiatric ...
12.04.2020 Chapter 2: The Hotline 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 people and service providers and advocates. In her mind, it was the 911 of homelessness. ...
12.01.2020 Chapter 1: Tulicia When we think about homelessness, we often have a certain image in our mind—people pushing shopping carts, or big sprawling tent encampments. But for the vast majority of homeless people, the experience is less visible. Many people who are unable ...
12.01.2020 According to Need: Prologue 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 just wasn’t designed to help everyone. According to Need is a documentary ...
11.29.2020 According to Need coming December 1 According to Need is a documentary podcast in 5 chapters from 99% Invisible’s Katie Mingle that asks: What are we doing to get people into housing? Coming December 1
11.25.2020 424- The Great Indoors Emily Anthes is the author of The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behaviour, Health and Happiness, and she notes that even before the pandemic hit, we humans spent about 90 percent of our time indoors ...
11.21.2020 423- Sean Exploder As you might know, we have our own composer here at 99pi named Sean Real who works with the producers to score our episodes with original music that she writes and records right here in Oakland. She has created over ...
11.18.2020 422- In The Unlikely Event If you’ve ever flown on a plane, you’ve been directed to study the safety briefing card in your seatback pocket. Every passenger plane, commercial or private, has to have safety cards on board. Mo Laborde is a reporter who has ...
11.11.2020 421- You've Got Enron Mail! Enron collapsed nearly 20 years ago, but chances are something you use today was affected by emails sent by 150 of the company's top employees. These emails — about meetings and energy markets but also affairs, divorces, and fraud — ...
11.03.2020 420- The Lost Cities of Geo Geocities was an online collection of metropolises, each with their own neighborhoods built around shared interests. The city metaphor helped make a whole new group of users understand the world wide web for the first time. At its peak, it ...
10.27.2020 419- Take a Walk During publicity interviews for The 99% Invisible City someone asked us, “What is your favorite way to experience the city?” The answer is walking. If you have nothing to do, take a walk. If you are overwhelmed with things to ...
10.23.2020 99pi Presents The Next Billion Users This bonus episode is sponsored by Google’s Next Billion User Initiative. Every week millions of people come online for the very first time. And everyone – no matter where they live, what language they speak or their level of digital ...
10.20.2020 418- Sign Stealing In the early days of baseball, sign-stealing was almost like a game within the game. Teams and players would try all kinds of tricks to get a glimpse of what the catcher was signaling to the pitcher. Even with this ...
10.13.2020 417- For the Love of Peat When we think about carbon storage, we tend to think about forests, but peatlands are also incredible carbon sinks. In Europe, peatlands contain five times more carbon than forests. But back in the 80s, most people didn't know this remarkable ...
10.06.2020 416- Exploring The 99% Invisible City We're excited to celebrate the release of The 99% Invisible City book by host Roman Mars and producer Kurt Kohlstedt with a guided audio tour of beautiful downtown Oakland, California. In this episode, we explain how anchor plates help hold ...
09.29.2020 415- Goodnight Nobody 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 Pre-order The 99% Invisible City
09.22.2020 414- The Address Book An address is something many people take for granted today, but they are in fact a fairly recent invention that has shaped our cities and taken on great political importance. Deirdre Mask is the author of The Address Book: What ...
09.15.2020 413- Highways 101 Icons and symbols and signage are all around us, and nowhere more so than on the open road. So for this episode of Ubiquitous Icons: hop in the car with Roman and Kurt for a crash course in roadside signage. ...
09.09.2020 412- Where Do We Go From Here? There have been many waves of panic and resistance to new people moving into the public sphere and needing accommodation. And a focus of that panic has often been… public bathrooms. The debate about trans bathroom access became a big ...
09.01.2020 411- Podcast Episode After the 1970s oil crisis, the global economy went into a recession. American unemployment hit 11 percent. And suddenly, middle-class families didn’t have money for name brands like Coke or Kellogg’s. Consumers wanted cheaper food. In response, supermarkets had to ...
08.25.2020 244- The Revolutionary Post Winifred Gallagher, author of How the Post Office Created America argues that the post office is not simply an inexpensive way to send a letter. The service was designed to unite a bunch of disparate towns and people under one ...
08.11.2020 410- Policing the Open Road Before the twentieth century, most Americans rarely came into contact with police officers. But with more and more drivers behind the wheel, police departments rapidly expanded their forces and increased officers’ authority to stop citizens who violated traffic laws. The ...
08.04.2020 409- California Love Scared Straight Walter Thompson-Hernandez was just eleven years old when he was admitted to L.A.'s infamous Scared Straight program for graffiti related crimes. In this episode, Walter, through a chance encounter, checks-in with his friend who went through the program with him, ...
07.29.2020 408- Valley of the Fallen About an hour northwest of Madrid, an enormous stone crucifix rises 500 feet out of a rocky mountaintop. It’s so big you can see it from miles away. Beneath the cross, there’s a sprawling Benedictine monastery and a basilica carved ...
07.21.2020 407- The Dolphin that Roared When Emily Oberman found a flag of the island nation of Anguilla her father had helped design in her attic, she had no idea it was connected to one of the strangest political revolutions in history. The Dolphin that Roared ...
07.14.2020 406- A Side of Franchise There are many books about McDonald’s that criticize the company for its many sins, and author Marcia Chatelain has read all of them. But her book comes at this famous fast-food restaurant from a different angle and with a much ...
07.08.2020 405- Freedom House Ambulance Service One night halfway through a graveyard shift at the hospital, orderly John Moon watched as two young men burst through the doors. They were working desperately to save a dying patient. Maybe today he wouldn’t bat an eye at this ...
06.30.2020 404- Return of Oñate's Foot All across the country, protestors have been tearing down old monuments. These monuments have been falling in the middle of historic protests against police brutality. Sparked by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, these demonstrations have spread to communities, ...
06.24.2020 403- Return of the Yokai In the US, mascots are used to pump up crowds at sporting events, or for traumatizing generations of children at Chuck E. Cheese, but in Japan it’s different. There are mascots for towns, aquariums, dentists' offices, even prisons. There are ...
06.16.2020 402- Instant Gramification If you’re on Instagram, there’s a decent chance you’ve seen a picture of one particular building called the Yardhouse. It was designed by the London-based architecture collective Assemble. The design of the building had a lot to say about creating ...
06.09.2020 Wedding Dresses: Articles of Interest #12 A wedding was once seen as a start of young adulthood. Now, a wedding has come to represent a crowning achievement -- a symbol that your whole life is together and you have accrued the time and space and resources ...
05.29.2020 Diamonds: Articles of Interest #11 Diamonds represent value, in all its multiple meanings: values, as in ethics, and value as in actual price. But what are these rocks actually worth? The ethics and costs of diamond rings have shifted with society, from their artificial scarcity ...
05.26.2020 Suits: Articles of Interest #10 Menswear can seem boring. If you look at any award show, most of the men are dressed in black pants and black jackets. This uniform design can be traced back to American Revolution, classical statuary, and one particular bloke bopping ...
05.19.2020 Perfume: Articles of Interest #9 The world of high end perfume is surprisingly lucrative, considering that scent is often the most ignored of our senses. But one can't judge a scent solely by the brand and shape of the bottle. With the right amount of ...
05.15.2020 Knockoffs: Articles of Interest #8 Brands hold immense sway over both consumers and the American legal system. Few know this as well as Dapper Dan, who went from street hustler to fashion impresario and has spent time on both sides of American trademark law. Articles ...
05.12.2020 A Fantasy of Fashion: Articles of Interest #7 In the wake of World War II, the government of France commissioned its most prominent designers to create a collection of miniature fashion dolls. It might seem like an odd thing to fund, but the fantasy of high fashion inspired ...
05.06.2020 401- The Natural Experiment In general, the coronavirus shutdowns have been terrible for academic research. Trips have been canceled, labs have shut down, and long-running experiments have been interrupted. But there are some researchers for whom the shutdowns have provided a unique opportunity—a whole ...
04.29.2020 400- The Smell of Concrete After Rain There have been over 200,000 deaths as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. All have been tragic, but there are two people in particular we’ve lost due to COVID that were part of the world of architecture and design that ...
04.21.2020 399- Masking for a Friend Here in the US, we're not used to needing to cover half of our faces in public, but if you look at the other side of the world, it's a different story. In parts of Asia, wearing a mask in ...
04.14.2020 398- Unsheltered in Place 99% Invisible producer Katie Mingle had already been working on a series about unhoused people in the Bay Area for over a year when the current pandemic began to unfold. Suddenly, this vulnerable demographic was cast into the spotlight due ...
04.07.2020 397- Wipe Out If you have tried to buy toilet paper in the last few weeks, you might have found yourself staring at an empty aisle in the grocery store, wondering where all the toilet paper has gone. Although it may seem like ...
03.31.2020 396- This Day in Esoteric Political History In times like these, we could all use a little historical perspective. In this new podcast from Radiotopia, Jody Avirgan, political historian Nicole Hemmer, and special guests rescue moments from U.S. history to map our journey through a tumultuous year. ...
03.25.2020 395- This is Chance! Redux It was the middle of the night on March 27, 1964. Earlier that evening, the second-biggest earthquake ever measured at the time had hit Anchorage, Alaska. Some houses had been turned completely upside down while others had skidded into the ...
03.17.2020 394- Roman Mars Describes Things As They Are On this shelter-in-place edition of 99pi, Roman walks around his house and tells stories about the history and design of various objects Buy Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are and all Beauty Pill records on Bandcamp or wherever you ...

Older episodes

99% Invisible

What's 99% Invisible about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

99% Invisible episodes:

427- Mini-Stories: Volume 11

426- Mini-Stories: Volume 10

425- Mini-Stories: Volume 9

Roman Mars on Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

Chapter 5: Housing Finally

Chapter 4: The List

Chapter 3: Housing First

Chapter 2: The Hotline

Chapter 1: Tulicia

According to Need: Prologue

According to Need coming December 1

424- The Great Indoors

423- Sean Exploder

422- In The Unlikely Event

421- You've Got Enron Mail!

420- The Lost Cities of Geo

419- Take a Walk

99pi Presents The Next Billion Users

418- Sign Stealing

417- For the Love of Peat

416- Exploring The 99% Invisible City

415- Goodnight Nobody

414- The Address Book

413- Highways 101

412- Where Do We Go From Here?

411- Podcast Episode

244- The Revolutionary Post

410- Policing the Open Road

409- California Love Scared Straight

408- Valley of the Fallen

407- The Dolphin that Roared

406- A Side of Franchise

405- Freedom House Ambulance Service

404- Return of Oñate's Foot

403- Return of the Yokai

402- Instant Gramification

Wedding Dresses: Articles of Interest #12

Diamonds: Articles of Interest #11

Suits: Articles of Interest #10

Perfume: Articles of Interest #9

Knockoffs: Articles of Interest #8

A Fantasy of Fashion: Articles of Interest #7

401- The Natural Experiment

400- The Smell of Concrete After Rain

399- Masking for a Friend

398- Unsheltered in Place

397- Wipe Out

396- This Day in Esoteric Political History

395- This is Chance! Redux

394- Roman Mars Describes Things As They Are

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