99% Invisible

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.

687 episodes transcribed
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Arts

374- Unsure Footing

Episode Date: October 16, 2019

Before 1992, the easiest way to run the time off the clock in a soccer game was just to pass the ball to the goalkeeper, who could pick the ball up, a...

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Arts

373- The Kirkbride Plan

Episode Date: October 9, 2019

Today, there are more than a hundred abandoned asylums in the United States that, to many people, probably seem scary and imposing, but not so long ag...

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Arts

372- The Help-Yourself City

Episode Date: October 2, 2019

There’s an idea in city planning called “informal urbanism.”  Some people call it “do-it-yourself urbanism.”  Informal urbanism covers all the ways pe...

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371- Dead Cars

Episode Date: September 18, 2019

Everything in Bethel, Alaska comes in by cargo plane or barge, and even when something stops working, it’s often too expensive and too inconvenient to...

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Arts

369- Wait Wait...Tell Me!

Episode Date: September 4, 2019

Waiting is something that we all do every day, but our experience of waiting, varies radically depending on the context. And it turns out that design...

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368- All Rings Considered

Episode Date: August 28, 2019

Before we turned our phones to silent or vibrate, there was a time when everyone had ringtones -- when the song your phone played really said somethin...

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Arts

367- Peace Lines

Episode Date: August 21, 2019

There are many walls in Belfast which physically separate Protestant neighborhoods from Catholic ones. Some are fences that you can see through, while...

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Arts

366- Model City

Episode Date: August 14, 2019

During the depths of the Depression in the late 1930s, 300 craftspeople came together for two years to build an enormous scale model of the City of Sa...

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365- On Beeing

Episode Date: August 7, 2019

Farmers have known for centuries that putting a hive of honeybees in an orchard results in more blossoms becoming cherries, almonds, apples and the li...

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364- He's Still Neutral

Episode Date: July 31, 2019

When confronted with trash piling up on a median in front of their home in Oakland, Dan and Lu Stevenson decided to try something unusual: they would...

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Arts

363- Invisible Women

Episode Date: July 24, 2019

Men are often the default subjects of design, which can have a huge impact on big and critical aspects of everyday life. Caroline Criado Perez is the...

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361- Built on Sand

Episode Date: July 10, 2019

Sand is so tiny and ubiquitous that it's easy to take for granted. But in his book The World in a Grain, author Vince Beiser traces the history of san...

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360- The Universal Page

Episode Date: July 3, 2019

Reporter Andrew Leland has always loved to read. An early love of books in childhood eventually led to a job in publishing with McSweeney’s where Andr...

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358- The Anthropocene Reviewed

Episode Date: June 19, 2019

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. On The Anthropocene Rev...

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357- The Barney Design redux

Episode Date: June 12, 2019

All over Oakland right now people are wearing Warriors shirts and flying their Warriors flags from their cars, and as much as we like our hometown tea...