99% Invisible

The first print advertisement for Wonder Bread came out before the bread itself. It stated only that “a wonder” was coming. In a lot of...

When you support Radiotopia, you are making sure 99% Invisible can keep coming to you weekly and you’ll be supporting our entire collective...

On July 13th, 1977, lightning struck an electricity transmission line in New York City, causing the line’s automatic circuit breaker to...

Everyone has tried it at some point. The authorities started turning a blind eye years ago, but it wasn’t officially legalized until the...

Straight lines form the core of our built environment. Building in straight lines makes predicting costs and calculating structural loads...

There’s a photograph we have tacked to our studio at 99% Invisible HQ. The photo, taken 1899, shows three men, all looking very...

On the southwest corner of Central Park West and 106th Street in New York City, there’s an enormous castle. It takes up the whole east end...

In the beginning, there was design. Before any other human discipline, even before the dawn of mankind its self, design was a practice...

Around 2005, a Seattle neighborhood called Ballard started to see unprecedented growth. Condominiums and apartment buildings were sprouting...

Cities, like living things, evolve slowly over time. Buildings and structures get added and renovated and removed, and in this process,...

IKEA hacking is the practice of buying things from IKEA and reengineering—or “hacking”—them to become customized, more functional, and...

Way back in October 2011 (see episode #38, true believers!), we broadcast a short excerpt of a radio documentary produced by Peregrine...

As humans have developed cities and built environments, we have also needed to develop ways to find our way through them. Sam Greenspan...

The best knock-offs in the world are in China. There are plenty of fake designer handbags and Rolexes, but China’s knock-offs go way beyond...

Reporter Whitney Jones argues that R.E.M.’s Out of Time is the most politically significant album in the history of the United States....

Well before the early 1500s, when Sir Thomas Moore first coined the term “Utopia,” people have been thinking about how to design their...

When designing a commercial structure, there is one safety component that must be designed right into the building from the start: egress....

During the 1961 Berlin Crisis—one of the various moments in the cold war in which we came frighteningly close to engaging in actual war...

The term “hijacking” goes back to prohibition days, when gangsters would rob moonshine trucks saying, “Hold your hands high, Jack!”...

As a fashion object and symbol, the high heel shoe is weighted with meaning. It’s also weighted with the wearer’s entire body weight. The...