99% Invisible

Today, we have three stories about designs meant to fool you. Camouflage meant to fool U-boats. Highways designed to fool your brain into going way faster than it should want to. And impeccably made fake signs meant to guide you to the right freeway. Three classic, favorite 99PI's completely updated, remixed, and rescored. Trompe L'oeil Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of...

In this bonus episode, Roman unearths the surprising story behind the 99% Invisible's name and delves into the unnoticed brilliance of everyday design—from the origins of reinforced concrete to the artistry of Japan’s manhole covers.  This episode is sponsored by PNC Bank, where “brilliantly boring” means stability that allows you to focus on what truly matters. Brilliantly Boring Subscribe to Sir...

In the heart of Copenhagen, a former military base transformed into Christiania, a self-proclaimed anarchist commune where residents built a new way of living, free from traditional rules. But as the years passed, external pressures and internal conflicts—especially a growing drug trade—put Christiania’s radical ideals to the test, forcing the community to confront whether it can stay true to its...

The unexpected story of how Alfred Nobel’s invention of dynamite—designed to build the world—was co-opted by anarchists to bring about its destruction. From revolutionizing infrastructure to arming political radicals, dynamite shaped the rise of both terrorism and modern law enforcement. The Infernal Machine Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and a w...

What started as Emily Nussbaum’s “guilty pleasure” of watching Big Brother became a deeper dive into the world of reality TV, leading to her book, Cue the Sun: The Invention of Reality TV . From its early, often morally questionable experiments with shows like Candid Microphone , to the strategy and drama of Survivor , Nussbaum traces the history of a genre that’s shaped how we see the world—and e...

This is the ninth official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro.  This week, Roman Mars and Elliott Kalan sit down with Majora Carter, an urban revitalization strategist and real estate developer from the South Bronx. Growing up, she always viewed the neighborhood as a place she had to leave in order to find success. But as she got o...

Karen MacDonough had paid her mortgage for years, raised her family, and lived a quiet life in her Quincy, Massachusetts home—until one day, a group of strangers appeared on her lawn, claiming her house was up for foreclosure. What followed was a surreal discovery of “zombie mortgages,” forgotten second loans from the housing bubble era that have come back to haunt homeowners like Karen. As real e...

Once considered the most dangerous city in the world due to drug cartel violence, by the early 2000s Medellin had reinvented itself. But gentrification is allowing criminal gangs to reap large profits from a shadow economy powered by the tourist boom. Medellin, Revisited Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and a whole week early.  Start a free tr...

The impacts of climate disasters are often measured in terms of property damage. But in places like Phoenix, Arizona, and in hot places all over the world, climate change is wreaking a very different kind of havoc – on living things. In the final episode of Not Built for This , we reckon with the biological limits of climate adaptation. Not Built For This is a 6-part mini-series from 99% Invisible...

Most of the stories in this series have been about places that are ill-prepared for the extreme weather that is coming their way. But this story is about a place that managed to get the kind of infrastructure that will actually help it survive climate change. How after more than two decades of tireless work, the residents of Hamilton City, California finally got the levee they deserved.  Not Built...

All across the country thousands of people are living in locations that regularly flood, and many of these places will only get more flood-prone as the climate continues to change. Residents who live in these danger zones are often trapped in a demoralizing loop—flooding, rebuilding, and praying each time that the pattern doesn’t repeat. However in some neighborhoods the government is trying a dif...

Insurance companies are not climate activists, but they know more about climate risk than just about anyone. And as storms get more extreme and unpredictable a lot of insurers are running the numbers on Florida and realizing that the math just isn’t working anymore. For decades, low cost insurance helped mask the risks of living in some of the riskiest parts of the country. However a climate corre...

In disasters where a lot of people lose their homes, the impacts are not confined to a single city or town. They ripple outward, cascading into the surrounding area, as the survivors are forced to go looking for new places to live. This is the story of what happened after the famous fire in Paradise, California, and where many of the survivors ended up. It’s a cautionary tale about a town caught i...

Reporter Emmett Fitzgerald was used to hearing people call his home state of Vermont a “climate haven.” But last summer, he got a wake up call in the form of a devastating flood. All throughout the United States, people are watching the places they love change in unpredictable and scary ways. Places that once felt safe are starting to feel risky. Places that already felt risky are starting to feel...

This is the eighth official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro.  This week, Roman Mars and Elliott Kalan sit down with Shiloh Frederick . Born and raised in New York City, Shiloh is a writer and influencer who shares her love of the city’s history and architecture on Instagram and TikTok. Last year, she chronicled her rather ambiti...

This week we're highlighting a couple of series that live inside the 99pi production tent. We’ve got a preview of a new miniseries for you called Not Built for This , created and hosted by Emmett FitzGerald. It's a show about climate change, but not in the way you might think. It's about how the complex systems that govern our lives are not designed for the tectonic changes that are coming our way...

When you’re watching the opening credits to a movie, it’s not just a list of names. What you’re actually seeing is intense negotiations by Hollywood stars and their agents playing out in text form. Title designers have to create something that’s entertaining to watch, while also presenting the names of all the creative people in a very particular order. It’s like a game of Tetris, to make sure eve...

The 2024 Paris Olympics are currently under way, and we thought we’d play two stories from the 99% Invisible archives about the art of the Olympics. First up, a story about the design and iconography of the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Then, Kurt Kohlstedt tells us about Olympic poetry . The Art of the Olympics Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and a...

From TV commercials and branded soda cans to Emily in Paris spon-con, the Olympics are once again everywhere. In the Olympic spirit, we’re bringing you four stories about the games in all their international, theatrical glory. In the first story, Christopher Johnson introduces the obscure, non-traditional sports from a forgotten part of Olympic history. The second story, by Chris Berube, offers a...

This is the seventh official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro.  This week, Roman Mars and Elliott Kalan sit down with Pete Buttigieg, the US Secretary of Transportation. One of his major responsibilities as Secretary is overseeing the implementation of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which has contributed billions of dollars t...

When you hear the word "river," you probably picture a majestic body of water flowing through a natural habitat. Well, the LA River looks nothing like that. Most people who see it probably mistake it for a giant storm drain. It's a deep trapezoidal channel with steep concrete walls, and a flat concrete bottom. Los Angeles was founded around this river. But decades ago it was confined in concrete s...

When you go to a concert, you might try to get there right when the doors open. Or perhaps you take your time and skip the opening act. But generally, you want to be there when the show starts. In February, everyone who went to a concert in Halberstadt, Germany, showed up 23 years late. The performance is of a piece called ORGAN2/ASLSP . ASLSP stands for “as slow as possible,” which is how the com...

It’s hard to overstate the vastness of the Skid Row neighborhood in Los Angeles. It spans roughly 50 blocks, which is about a fifth of the entire downtown area of Los Angeles. It’s very clear when you’ve entered Skid Row. The sidewalks are mostly occupied by makeshift homes. A dizzying array of tarps and tents stretch out for blocks, improvised living structures sitting side by side. The edge of S...

When two Stanford graduate students set out to create a new kind of cigarette that wouldn’t kill them, they didn’t foresee all the obstacles that lay ahead—or the powerful forces their invention would unleash. Nearly 10 years after the launch of the JUUL, Backfired: The Vaping Wars asks: Could e-cigarettes have been the solution to one of the world’s most pressing public health problems—or was thi...

This is the sixth official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro.  This week, Roman Mars and Elliott Kalan sit down with Mike Schur , who created the critically acclaimed NBC comedy The Good Place , and co-created Parks and Recreation , Brooklyn 99 , Rutherford Falls , and Netflix’s upcoming, A Classic Spy . Prior to Parks , Michael s...