99% Invisible

"Part of the paradox at the heart of manufactured housing," explains Esther Sullivan, a sociologist at the University of Colorado Denver...

When a doctor reveals a terminal diagnosis to a patient -- that process is as delicate a procedure as any surgery, with potentially serious...

For nearly five decades, the laugh track was ubiquitous on television sitcoms, but in the early 2000s, it began to disappear. What...

The Gander Airport in Newfoundland was once the easternmost airfield in North America, so when transatlantic air travel was new and...

Andre Walker became famous for being Oprah Winfrey’s hair stylist, but he is also known for something else: a system that he created back...

To this day, architects tend to turn their noses up at Las Vegas, or simply dismiss it as irrelevant to serious design theory. But as...

The battlefield has always been at the mercy of the climate, but there was a time in U.S. military history when we did more than just pray...

They are hulking, but graceful -- human-made whales that float in the air. For over a century, lighter-than-air vehicles have captured the...

The way we draw our political districts has a huge effect on U.S. politics, but the process is also greatly misunderstood. Gerrymandering...

All around the country, there stands a figure so much a part of historical architecture and urban landscapes that she is rarely noticed....

In the late 1920s, the Ford Motor Company bought up millions of acres of land in Brazil. They loaded boats with machinery and supplies, and...

The Bijlmermeer (or Bijlmer, for short) was built just outside of Amsterdam in the 1960s. It was designed by modernist architects to be a...

After World War 2, city planners in Amsterdam wanted to design the perfect “City of the Future.” They decided to build a new neighborhood,...

The Chase logo was introduced in 1961, when the Chase National Bank and the Bank of the Manhattan Company merged to form the Chase...

When current President Donald Trump took office, he promised to build an “an impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful, southern...

In the 1970s it looked like the beloved, 200-year-old Cape Hatteras lighthouse was in danger. The sea was getting closer and threatening to...

Cartoonist and theorist Scott McCloud has been making and thinking about comics for decades. He is the author of Understanding Comics: The...

When air conditioning was invented in 1902, it was designed to take out the humidity in the air so printers could run four color magazines,...

This part two of the 2017/2018 mini-stories episodes, where Roman interviews the staff and our collaborators about their favorite little...

Japan’s Shinkansen doesn’t look like your typical train. With its long and pointed nose, it can reach top speeds up to 150–200 miles per...