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.
692 episodes transcribedBrian 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...
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...
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.’ Converti...
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...
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 y...
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...
Back in January, Bloomberg News published a story quoting an obscure government official named Richard Trumka Jr. He works with the Consumer Product S...
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...
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 me...
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, on...
In Proximity is a podcast from Proximity Media about craft, career, and creativity.Proximity founder Ryan Coogler talks all about podcasts with Roman...
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...
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...
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...
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...
The unlikely battle between the creator of the New York Public Library children's reading room and the beloved children’s classic Goodnight Moon.Goodn...
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 Set...
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...
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...
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 the...
