(Not Just) Another Brick in the Wall
A closer look at the messy, beautiful bricks hiding across Chicago.
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99% Invisible
Design is everywhere in our lives, perhaps most importantly in the places where we've just stopped noticing. 99% Invisible is a weekly exploration of the process and power of design and arch...
Episodes
20 of 832 episodes
100 Objects #20: AA Sobriety Chip
Imbued in the Alcoholics Anonymous sobriety chip is a hidden history of America’s relationship to gender, religion, and morality.
Tootle of a Devilish Song
How a Swiss mountain call crossed the Atlantic and helped define the sound of country music.
100 Objects #19: Western Electric 500 Series
Former MythBuster Adam Savage joins Roman Mars to explore the history of the 500 Series Telephone and what we lost when we eventually decide...
The Rocky Statue
How a movie prop became one of Philadelphia’s most beloved monuments, and sparked a decades-long fight over where it belonged.
100 Objects #18: Hair Relaxer
How a single product—the hair relaxer—became a mirror for all of America's contradictions.
Doves Type
A legendary typeface, a spectacular friendship breakup, and one extremely committed act of revenge.
100 Objects #17: M43 Field Jacket
How should the military outfit its soldiers to make them as safe and effective as possible?
Kobuk the Destroyer
Every product has to be tested somehow, and sometimes that means finding increasingly creative ways to break it.
100 Objects #16: Wheel of Fortune Dalmatian
How the ceramic Dalmatian became the mascot for one of America's most popular game shows.
1-800-PODCAST
This week, two stories about the strange power of the 1-800 number.
100 Objects #15: Bundy Clock
How the time clock not only ignited a revolution in workplace efficiency and surveillance, but transformed our relationship to time itself.
Spolia
Spolia, from a Liverpool neighborhood to ancient Rome.
100 Objects #14: Basketball Sleeve
Producer and reporter Ramtin Arablouei has a simple question: Why are so many NBA players wearing a compression sleeve on their arm?
The Bone Wars
Two rival paleontologists turn a hunt for dinosaur bones into an all-out scientific war.
100 Objects #13: The Sand Letters
Comedian Elliott Kalan joins Roman Mars to tell the story of how a politician who owed so much to a corrupt government system became the one...
Bamboo Is Innocent
A devastating fire put one of Hong Kong's oldest building traditions on trial, but the real story runs much deeper.
100 Objects #12: "Negro Cloth"
Roman Mars and historian Seth Rockman trace the strange life of so-called "Negro cloth" — a textile category defined by nothing but who it w...
The Borrowed Nature of Biomimicry
Behind every perfect nature-inspired design is a far more complicated story.
100 Objects #11: Brannock Device
In 1925, the world saw the birth of what just might be the greatest gadget in American History: the Brannock Device.