List of 99% Invisible episodes

Acoustic design, city soundscapes, and how to make listening in shared spaces pleasant.

History of the perception of the Transamerica Pyramid within the architecture community.

Description of the app RJDJ and the implications of environment-aware, adaptable sound.

History and Status of the Original Columns of the US Capitol

1950s era Soviet Consumer Goods Compared to Western Goods

Efficiency of a Toyota Plant Translated to American Hospitals

The exploration of hidden public outdoor staircases in California as mapped by Charles Fleming.

The invention of the car and the resulting rise of automobile fatalities, and how the concept of jaywalking came to be.

The design of the sport of basketball, from the amusing history of the basketball hoop and net to the addition of a nearly-invisible element which redefined and changed the game: the shot clock.

The history and design of slot machines, the concept and mental state of uninterrupted play (flow), and why and how people gamble.

Arseny Avraamov's "Symphony of Factory Sirens," a musical performance by the city of Moscow itself, featuring factory sirens, foghorns, soldiers' footsteps, guns, whistles, and proletarian shouts.

The ethics of designing and constructing buildings intended for solitary confinement such as Pelican Bay State Prison.

The invention of rebar, or steel-reinforced concrete, and its use in the Alvord Lake Bridge in Golden Gate Park.

The design of Superman, and how the character has managed to stay relevant, and popular, for over 75 years.

A group of teenagers' secret hangout at what they called "Heyoon," a pavilion on a piece of private property in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

One of Ladislav Sutnar's most important contributions to the world: the design of parenthetical area codes.

A joint episode with NPR's Planet Money on the economics of the end of the 1983 film Trading Places.

Maurice Noble's work as a layout artist with Warner Brothers and his lasting impact on the art of animation.

Reversing the flow of the Chicago River.

Milton Glaser's ubiquitous I Love New York design, and its popularity, effects, and influences.

The use broadcast clocks—diagrams depicting specific programming element times—in radio, specifically on NPR.

Wallace Neff's airform "bubble" houses made of shotcrete.

The design of the modern telephone exchange and history of the telephone switchboard.

An update to Episode 58, reporting on the destruction of the Purple Hotel.

A live performance of a segment from Jon Mooalem's book Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America, featuring music by the band Black Prairie.

Announcement of the Kickstarter project for Season 4 of 99% Invisible and a short story about the importance of reading commemorative plaques.

James Gulliver Hancock's project of drawing every building in New York City.

The history and design of revolving doors, including their energy-saving potential and reasons behind their use or lack thereof.

Maps and designs of unbuilt structures and communities, from Oakland to Manhattan to the Marin Headlands.

The story of Cameron Smith's efforts to build his own space suit.

Shortwave radio stations that only broadcast numbers.

The history of the safety elevator and Elisha Otis.

The 1945 B-25 Empire State Building crash and Betty Lou Oliver's 79-floor fall—and survival.

The origins of the Chrysler Building and the Manhattan Company Building, and the stories of their architects.

The long, surprising history of magazine cover design, featuring various iconic covers and design directors.

A history and design of the International Symbol of Access (or Wheelchair Symbol) and a grassroots movement promoting its redesign to better serve and represent the disabled community.

The architecture and history behind Pizza Hut's ever-recognizable building design and a blog dedicated to cataloguing restaurants that "Used To Be A Pizza Hut."

The story and design of a tunnel running underneath the Berlin Wall constructed by a university student and his friends, the lives it saved, and its creator.

A story of a peculiar landmass named Busta Rhymes Island and naming conventions set by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names.

Attempts at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository to leave long-term nuclear waste warning messages that can persist for 10,000 years, including an eccentric proposal for cats that change color when exposed to radiation.

This Halloween episode covers the history and psychology of the ouija board game.

Giant inflatable tube men known as Airdancers often promote sales events. This episode interviews the creator of these waving and flailing tube men.

The story of the Centennial Light in Livermore, California, that has been burning almost non-stop for 113 years.

About the end of The Sims Online.

An NPR documentary about the Sunshine Hotel, a flophouse in New York City.

Interviews the bureaucrat and welfare worker Larry Townsend, who organized a welfare program in Riverside County, California in the early 1990s.

The environmental history of Southern California's Salton Sea, a high salinity lake which was created by accident and is slowly evaporating.

A brief history of Lucia Moholy, a lesser known Bauhaus photographer, and the impact of her work.

Much of the world is designed for the "average" human, a person who doesn't exist. Todd Rose re-evaluates what that means and how we can better create for the non-average.

American infrastructure is in trouble. By discussing the United States' road system, civil engineering professor Henry Petroski explains what is needed to get it back on track.

Developing societies sometimes have to rely on land reclamation to make the land more suitable for human activities.

The clothing industry is constantly, and fashion experts such as WGSN attempt to forecast upcoming fashion trends.

On Project Cybersyn, a cybernetics project developed in Chile under the presidency of Salvador Allende aimed at monitoring and controlling the Chilean economy.

On incremental building created by Alejandro Aravena and its application by his architecture firm Elemental S.A.

The design of the McMansion is discussed with Kate Wagner, the creator of the blog McMansion Hell.

Space debris has been accumulating since humans have been sending satellites into space. This episodes explores possible means for cleaning up this debris and future opportunities for space tourism.

Baseball statistics changed the way players and coaches approach the game. This has, to some extent, led to the development of the infield shift.

During the presidency of Barack Obama, the White House Office of Presidential Correspondence would sort through all communications sent to the President Obama and choose ten messages for him to read.

The history of architectural acoustics and reverberation.

How the NBC chimes became one of the most iconic sounds in radio history.

The history of the Guano Islands Act.

Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, produced a city plan for the utopian city Zion. This plan, which uses the grid system, was later adapted by Brigham Young to design Salt Lake City, Utah.

Members of the 99% Invisible production team share short stories that they have gathered while researching for the show. These stories include the "squaring" of the circular grid of Circleville, Ohio, the "Dutch reach" method of opening a car door near a bike lane, the Estádio Milton Corrêa stadium on the Equator, and the design of the LIGO experiment.

The second installment in which the 99% Invisible staff share short stories of interest that weren't suitable for a standalone episode. These stories include the reversed American flag, Beatrix Campbell colorfully describing the history of The Byker Wall, entries of fake "paper towns" in maps as copyright traps, knox boxes, and a design comparison of the Snellen and LogMAR eyesight charts.

The history of police reform after the shooting of Eulia Love and the development of the Taser.

The author Winifred Gallagher has argued that the United States Postal Service created America. This episode examines this claim, from its origins with Benjamin Franklin, and its history with the Pony Express, to more modern developments.

This episode examines the history of Frank Lloyd Wright's ambitious housing project Usonia. The project was meant to be inexpensive and customizable, fitting into its environment.

The second part of 99% Invisible's episode series on Frank Lloyd Wright's housing project Usonia. This episode focuses on the project's legacy, including Usonian houses still used in modern times, and its influence on modern architecture.

In 1953, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered his famous speech "Atoms for Peace" and set up a program for the peaceful use of atomic energy. One of the projects of this program was atomic gardening, which involved using radiation to produce mutated crops.

The modern sanctuary movement started after the Nicaraguan Revolution of 1979. Migrants fleeing the revolution sought refuge in the United States, but many were turned down under the 1980 Refugee Act. John Fife, a Presbyterian minister in Tucson, Arizona decided that it was their duty to shelter these immigrants, starting the sanctuary movement.

After a group of churches in the 1980s decided that they would defy the law and shelter illegal immigrants fleeing civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala, the Immigration and Naturalization Service started examining this new sanctuary movement by sending out undercover agents. Some participants in the movement, including Rev. John Fife were found guilty of breaking immigration laws. Some churches sued the government in a case which was settled in 1990 giving immigrants work permits.

Roman Mars interviews graphic designer Michael Bierut. They discuss logo design in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, how people react to changes in logos, and logo criticism in general.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian citizens started tearing down monuments of Vladimir Lenin. This episode describes the debate behind these removals and their historical significance.

During World War II, thousands of Japanese Americans were interned in camps such as Manzanar. In the 1970s, activists such as Warren Furutani and Sue Kunitomi Embrey formed the Manzanar Committee to lobby for the site to be recognized as a historic landmark.

An excerpt from Alexis Madrigal’s audio documentary "Containers" about the history of container ships.

The life and works of the Los Angeles-based African American architect Paul Williams.

Footage shot for documentary films often does not come with adequate sound, so the film crew has sound recordists and Foley artists add sounds to "fix" this. Includes interviews with Chris Palmer, Richard Hinton, and Chris Watson.

Electricity meters were designed to measure the amount of electric energy consumed by a household. However, when electricity leaves a house, the dial turns backward. While this presented little to no problems at first, the rise of solar power has brought this feature back into the spotlight.

The history of Colma, California, a necropolis where the dead far outnumber the living.

When the 1964 Alaska earthquake shook Anchorage, Alaska and killed 115 people, the survivors and the outside world relied on the reporting of Genie Chance to understand the situation.

After Brazil lost the 1950 FIFA World Cup, the team held a contest to redesign their jerseys. The winner of this contest, Aldyr Schlee, describes his inspiration for and views of the jersey design.

As a result of gentrification in Manhattan in the 1960s and '70s, some residents of Lower East Side resorted to squatting in abandoned buildings. In 2002, these squatters finally bought their homes with the help of the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board.

After the Baltimore Orioles opened their new stadium in 1992, many other baseball teams followed suit, creating smaller stadiums that fit into the existing geography of their cities.

This episode features many short stories. Chevron operates some gas stations with a Standard awning, to keep the trademark. Desire paths are shortcuts bicyclists and pedestrians take to navigate more smoothly. In the late 1800s, the Los Angeles Area had to switch the frequency of its electricity from 50 Hz to 60 Hz, to match the rest of the country. Many designs are used only locally, such as European tilt-and-turn windows, Finnish dish draining closets, Japanese Kotatsu tables, and the Australian Hills Hoist. A town in Saskatchewan, unable to afford its own streets signs, may have taken Calgary's old signs, and just renamed their roads.

The 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City used a graphic design campaign across the entire city, created by Lance Wyman and Peter Murdoch. On October 2, 1968, the peaceful Mexico 68 student movement was massacred by the Mexican government. Both sides used a version of Wyman's design to promote their ideologies—the status quo, or change. The iconography was also used in the Mexico City Metro map.

The Donnell Garden's pool's shape, like a kidney bean, became famous, inspired by Alvar Aalto's functionalist design in the Villa Mairea. These pools sprawled across Southern California, and a drought in the 1970s let Aalto's shape become the basis for skateparks around the world.

The history of the birth control pill and its packaging.

The first episode of ESPN's recently debuted 30 for 30 Podcasts. In 1992, Reebok launched the Dan & Dave advertising campaign, marketed as an attempted to decide whether Dan O'Brien or Dave Johnson was "the world's greatest athlete." The campaign was altered after O'Brien failed to qualify for the 1992 Summer Olympics.

In late 2011, the Spanish village Sodeto won the largest prize to date in the Spanish Christmas Lottery drawing, a sum of about 750 million euros. Every resident had purchased at least one share of the winning ticket except one, a Greek filmmaker who has chronicled the villager's experience with their newfound wealth.

The first episode of Radiotopia's new podcast Showcase, which explains how the music world transformed when recording methods transitioned from analog to digital.

The impact of the stethoscope on medical history in the late modern and contemporary periods.

The history of the Great Dismal Swamp which borders Virginia and North Carolina, and the maroons who inhabited it in the 18th and early 19th centuries after escaping slavery.

This episode explains how the film producer Mark Bramhill came up with the "Person in Lotus Position" (🧘) emoji and submitted it to the Unicode Consortium for approval.

A story originally told by Nate DiMeo in The Memory Palace, this episode imagines what the plaque for the Nathan Bedford Forrest Monument could have looked like as a tribute Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate Army general and Ku Klux Klan member.

This episode features three episodes from 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy, a podcast that explores the histories of a number of inventions and their far-reaching consequences. It explains how the s-bend pipe revolutionized indoor plumbing, how the search for a ‘death ray’ led to the invention of radar, and the impact of bricks.

This episode was a collaboration between 99% Invisible and the Guggenheim Museum.