99% Invisible

While we’re gearing up for season 3, we present two pieces from two shows we love: First up, Language Bites from RTE Choice in Ireland....

New Public Sites is an investigation into some of the invisible sites and overlooked features of our everyday public spaces. These are the...

Sean Cole is a poet and he knows what you think of that. He is also a radio producer. One night, drunk and stumbling around the Hudson...

What’s the difference between what the public sees and what an architect sees when they look at a building? The hotel on the very prominent...

This is the Kickstarter video for funding the new season of 99% Invisible. If you enjoy the show and want to help keep it going, now is the...

Starlee Kine’s friend Noel works in advertising. In 2003, Noel was working in at an agency in Richmond, VA. Everyone wanted to work on...

Goethe said, “Architecture is frozen music.” I like that. Of course that was before audio recording, so now, for the most part, music is...

If you’re a beer nerd, or have a friend who’s a beer nerd, you’ve heard of Belgian beers. Belgians take beer very seriously. Amongst the...

US paper currency is so ubiquitous that to really look at its graphic design with fresh eyes requires some deliberate and focused...

What happens when we build big? Julia Barton remembers going to the top floor of Dallas’s then-new city hall when she was teenager. The...

Even during the construction of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the deck would go up and down by several feet with the slightest...

“Cities exist to bring people together, but cities can also keep people apart” – Daniel D’Oca, Urban Planner, Interboro Partners. Cities...

The acoustics of a building are a big concern for architects. But for designers at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, it’s the absence...

In the US, it’s called a line. In Canada, it’s often referred to as a line-up. Pretty much everywhere else, it’s known as a queue. My...

“I have this habit of walking into any door that’s unlocked…You start poking around, going into doors…you find the coolest things…” -Andrea...

Somebody might be able to do a great painting that’s 20 x 30 inches, but you take that down to 1 x 1.5 inches, and it’s a challenge to make...

Before the 1850s, dentures were made out of very hard, very painful and very expensive material, like gold or ivory. They were a luxury...

Beauty Pill is band I really like from Washington DC. They have released two EPs (The Cigarette Girl From the Future and You Are Right to...

The Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis became most famous at the moment of its demise. The thirty-three high-rise towers built in the...

“There’s a secret jazz seeping from Washington’s aging Metro escalators – those anemic metal walkways that fill our transit system…they...