99% Invisible

Elevators are old. They would have to be. Because it is in our nature to rise. History is full of things that lift other things. In ancient...

If you tune around on a shortwave radio, you might stumble across a voice reciting an endless stream of numbers. Just numbers, all day,...

Cameron Smith is building a space suit in his apartment. He’s not an astronaut. He’s not even an engineer. Cameron Smith is an...

We have seen the future, and the future is mostly blue. Or, put another way: in our representations of the future in science fiction...

There is an allure in unbuilt structures: the utopian, futuristic transports, the impossibly tall skyscrapers, even the horrible highways,...

The story goes like this: Theophilus Van Kannel hated chivalry. There was nothing he despised more than trying to walk in or out of a...

I love those moments when you’re walking in your neighborhood and suddenly nothing is familiar. In a good way. Sean Cole began seeing his...

99% Invisible started as a side project I made in my bedroom at night, and after two years of making the program, I turned to Kickstarter...

We have one cardinal rule on 99% Invisible: No cardinals. Meaning, we deal with the built world, not the natural world. So, when I read Jon...

If you are an undertaker in 1878 Kansas City, and you learn that your competitor’s wife works as a telephone switchboard operator and has...

If you were a movie star in the market for a mansion in 1930s Los Angeles, there was a good chance you might call on Wallace Neff. Neff...

There’s a term that epitomizes what we radio producers aspire to create: the “driveway moment.” It’s when a story is so good that you...

By now, the story is well known. A man sits in the backseat of a cab, sketching on a notepad as night falls over a crumbling city. He...

Chicago’s biggest design achievement probably isn’t one of its amazing skyscrapers, but the Chicago River, a waterway disguised as a...

If you grew up watching Warner Brothers cartoons, you might remember seeing the name Chuck Jones in big letters in the opening credits....

An ode to an information designer who made life a little bit easier for millions and millions of people: Ladislav Sutnar, the man who put...

Growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Alex Goldman was a misfit. Bored and disaffected and angry, he longed for a place to escape to. And then...

I’m willing to concede from the get-go that I might be wrong about the entire premise of this story, but Superman has never really worked...

There’s something about rebar that fascinates me. If nothing else because there are very few things that invoke a fear of being skewered....

Lawyers have an ethics code. Journalists have an ethics code. Architects do, too. According to Ethical Standard 1.4 of the American...