99% Invisible

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...

In the 1980s, the little Christian comic books known as Chick Tracts were EVERYWHERE. You’d find them in movie theaters and bus station...

In Proximity is a podcast from Proximity Media about craft, career, and creativity.Proximity founder Ryan Coogler talks all about podcasts...

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...

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...

Amid the noisy bustle of Mexico City, there is a particularly iconic sound echoing on repeat in the background. This recording blares from...

As electronic news gathering was gaining prominence in the early 20th century, the American Bar Association began to fear its effect on...

The unlikely battle between the creator of the New York Public Library children's reading room and the beloved children’s classic Goodnight...

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...

LA might be the most extreme parking city on the planet. Parking regulations have made it nearly impossible to build new affordable...

In her new book Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World (in a Big Way), structural engineer Roma Agrawal identifies...

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's a new movie out called Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game. It’s a fun and extremely meta biopic telling the story of Roger Sharpe,...

Last year, Roman Mars teamed up with Hank Green to guest host Dear Hank & John -- this year he's back on the Greens' show once again, but...

From scratchers to the Powerball, the lottery is the most popular form of gambling in the United States, even though the odds of winning a...

Today the Netherlands has a reputation as a kind of bicycling paradise. Dutch people own more bicycles per capita than any other place in...

The “panopticon” might be the best known prison concept in the world. In the original design, all the cells are built around a central...

Vintage crosscuts that were made between 1880 and 1930 are often the tool of choice for trail workers who maintain the country’s roughly...

The podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz is a show about the world's most interesting and recognizable sounds. I think of it as almost a sibling...

Back when whale oil was mainly used as a fuel to burn in lanterns and streetlights, an enterprising man named William F. Nye found a new...