Margarine is yellow, like butter, but it hasn’t always been. At times and in places, it has been a bland white, or even a dull pink. These strange variations were a byproduct of 150-year war to destroy margarine, and everything that it stands for. During this epic fight for survi … | Continue reading
Rioters carried many familiar flags during the January 6th insurrection at the United States Capitol — Confederate, MAGA, as well as some custom-made ones like a flag of Trump looking like Rambo. Except for onlookers who were already familiar with the design, it would have been e … | Continue reading
Rioters carried many familiar flags during the January 6th insurrection at the United States Capitol — Confederate, MAGA, as well as some custom-made ones like a flag of Trump looking like Rambo. Except for onlookers who were already familiar with the design, it would have been e … | Continue reading
Between early wired networks and today’s fiber optics sat a system of microwave relay towers transmitting information from coast to coast across the United States. Built in the early 1950s, this line-of-sight network spanned the continent using zig-zag patterns to avoid signal ov … | Continue reading
The Sears & Roebuck Mail Order Catalog was nearly omnipresent in early 20th century American life. By 1908, one fifth of Americans were subscribers. Anyone anywhere in the country could order a copy for free, look through it, and then have anything their heart desired delivered d … | Continue reading
In 1920, a Dutch writer named Gerard Nolst Trenité published a poem in English titled The Chaos, designed to draw attention to English spelling and pronunciation — and all the confusion its absurdities have let loose upon the world. It begins “Dearest creature in creation; Studyi … | Continue reading
In 1920, a Dutch writer named Gerard Nolst Trenité published a poem in English titled The Chaos, designed to draw attention to English spelling and pronunciation — and all the confusion its absurdities have let loose upon the world. It begins “Dearest creature in creation; Studyi … | Continue reading
No one is quite sure what shape Donald Trump’s presidential library will take, or even whether he’ll even have one at all. On the one hand, he is a real estate developer with a lot of buildings under his belt. On the other hand, the logistics of creating a modern presidential lib … | Continue reading
No one is quite sure what shape Donald Trump’s presidential library will take, or even whether he’ll even have one at all. On the one hand, he is a real estate developer with a lot of buildings under his belt. On the other hand, the logistics of creating a modern presidential lib … | Continue reading
Benches in parks, train stations, bus shelters and other public places are meant to offer seating, but only for a limited duration. Many elements of such seats are subtly or overtly restrictive. Arm rests, for instance, indeed provide spaces to rest arms, but they also prevent pe … | Continue reading
In the early 1990s, a block of European countries embarked on a pretty wild experiment. They decided to get rid of all their money and to replace it with a single common currency. Today, the Euro is something we take for granted. But thirty years ago, it was an extraordinary and … | Continue reading
Axolotls are nature’s great regenerators. They are able to grow back not just their tails, but also legs, arms, even parts of vital organs, including their hearts. This remarkable ability is one of several traits that turned the axolotl into a scientific superstar. And the dream … | Continue reading
In 2015 the world was divided into two warring factions overnight. And at the center of this schism was a single photograph. Cecilia Bleasdale took a picture of a dress that she planned to wear to her daughter’s wedding and that photo went beyond viral. Some saw it as blue with b … | Continue reading
When 99% Invisible producer Katie Mingle’s father Jim Mingle retired, he began walking — a lot. He’d always been a walker, but with more time, he took up long-distance, multi-day trips. And even though he’s an American, he mostly preferred to walk in the UK. In fact, over the cou … | Continue reading
What does water mean to you? In this feature, author Bonnie Tsui (Why We Swim), actress Joy Bryant, submarine pilot Erika Bergman, figure skater Elladj Baldé, 85-year-old synchronized swimmer Barbara Eison-White, professional mermaid Olivia Gonzales, and others share stories abou … | Continue reading
When Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt were promoting The 99% Invisible City in late 2020, one question came up over and over again in conversations and interviews about our built environment: in what ways will the COVID pandemic change cities long term? Realistically, it’s hard to a … | Continue reading
Officially titled The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food, it was often known simply as “Kniga” (translated: “book”) because it was one of the only cookbooks to exist in the Soviet Union. The volume is peppered with glossy photographs of really lavish spreads and packed with text as w … | Continue reading
Britt Young is a geographer and tech writer based in the bay area. She also has what’s called a “congenital upper limb deficiency.” In other words, she was born without the part of her arm just below her left elbow. She’s used different sorts of prosthetic devices her whole life, … | Continue reading
Throughout its reign, the British Empire stole a lot of stuff. Today those objects are housed in genteel institutions across the UK and the world. They usually come with polite plaques. This week, 99pi is featuring an episode from the podcast Stuff the British Stole hosted by Mar … | Continue reading
They look a bit like bumpers, generally painted black against the bright yellow of a conventional American school bus; but they are more than a simple aesthetic choice, or a modest safety measure in case of a collision. These raised “rub rails” have a slightly bigger story to tel … | Continue reading
The Tokyo rail and metro systems make up one of the largest rapid transit networks in the world. More than 14 billion people walk through its turnstiles every year. That’s about 40 million rides every single day. On a typical morning during rush hour, commuters stand cheek to jow … | Continue reading
The Tokyo rail and metro systems make up one of the largest rapid transit networks in the world. More than 14 billion people walk through its turnstiles every year. That’s about 40 million rides every single day. On a typical morning during rush hour, commuters stand cheek to jow … | Continue reading
Throughout its reign, the British Empire stole a lot of stuff. Today those objects are housed in genteel institutions across the UK and the world. They usually come with polite plaques. This week, 99pi is featuring an episode from the podcast Stuff the British Stole hosted by Mar … | Continue reading
Like its nondescript official name, Armstrong Flooring’s “Pattern #5253” fades easily into the background of memory — a linoleum floor design consisting of zig-zagging faux bricks that squeaks underfoot. See it again, however, and it can feel instantly familiar, too. Chances are … | Continue reading
Every year, fights break out on airplanes. They happen between the people who lean back in their seats, and the people who get their knees smooshed. Sometimes planes have to be grounded because of these arguments. If you think about it, these arguments are the result of confusion … | Continue reading
Information technology is arguably as old as the written word, but the 1900s saw the rise of a paradigm-shifting design all too easily taken for granted. The ancients had clay and stone marble tablets; offices in the industrial revolution had desks with drawers and cubbies and fo … | Continue reading
When 99% Invisible producer Katie Mingle’s father Jim Mingle retired, he began walking —a lot. He’d always been a walker, but with more time, he took up long-distance, multi-day trips. And even though he’s an American, he mostly preferred to walk in the UK. In fact, over the cour … | Continue reading
After Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd last year, tens of thousands of people all over the world took to the streets to protest police violence against Black people. And if you look at images from these marches, you will probably start to notice a co … | Continue reading
Along flat stretches of countryside from Argentina and South Africa to the United Kingdom, strange spires can be spotted at a great distance, but what really stands out up close is the goats that occupy them. Goat towers date back over a century, but many more recent ones trace … | Continue reading
Let us be the first to wish you a Happy Flag Day, beautiful nerds! Anyone who has listened to 99% Invisible regularly knows we have a thing for flags, which can beautiful things that give communities something symbolic to rally around. This year, we decided to get the celebratio … | Continue reading
After Producer Katie Mingle’s mom wrote a romance novel, Katie set out to understand the romance genre and its classic covers. There was a lot to unpack. What makes a book about love a Romance? Sarah MacClean, a romance novelist (who once wrote a romance based on a 99PI episode), … | Continue reading
Every time you go to the bathroom, you should thank Alexander Cumming, the first person to patent a flushable toilet. Cumming’s great innovation was to hook up the toilet to an s-shaped pipe, which uses water to stop sewer gas from coming up and entering a home. Since Cumming’s b … | Continue reading
For the most part, we take time for granted; maybe we don’t have enough of it, but we at least know how it works — well, most of the time. A lot of what we think about time is relatively recent, and some of what we take for granted isn’t quite as universal as one | Continue reading
Today, Berlin is one of the premier destinations for techno music fans. People come from all over the world to party all night to the rhythmic beat of Berlin’s club scene. And this music that the city is most famous for developed in large part because of the thing the city is mos … | Continue reading
If you look around you right now, about 90% of what you’re looking at came to you onboard a cargo ship—your television, your sofa, most of the stuff in your kitchen. But as the number of these cargo ships has increased, so has a problem: workers stuck on ships that have been comp … | Continue reading
If you live in an American city and you don’t personally use a wheelchair, it’s easy to overlook the small ramp at most intersections, between the sidewalk and the street. Today, these curb cuts are everywhere, but fifty years ago — when an activist named Ed Roberts was young — m … | Continue reading
The United States remains one of the few places on the planet not to have adopted the metric system. Instead of looking to remedy that particular disconnect, the country seems to be doubling down by standardizing something most would assume already was: the foot. Remarkable as it … | Continue reading
The United States remains one of the few places on the planet not to have adopted the metric system. Instead of looking to remedy that particular disconnect, the country seems to be doubling down by standardizing something most would assume already was: the foot. Remarkable as it … | Continue reading
On the show this week, we’re bringing you an episode of a new podcast called, La Brega. And to tell us all about the series is Alana Cassanova-Burgess. Casanova-Burgess traces back the story of the boom and bust of Levittown, a massive suburb that was founded on the idea of bring … | Continue reading
In 2015, the owners of a Dutch cycling company began shipping bicycles across the Atlantic to the United States, but time and time again these deliveries were damaged in transit. VanMoof tried various solutions — “Tougher boxes? Better packaging? Different shipping partners? Noth … | Continue reading
At least for the time being, art is the primary way we experience dinosaurs. We can study bones and fossils, but barring the invention of time travel, we will never see how these animals lived with our own eyes. There are no photos or videos, of course, which means that if we wan … | Continue reading
Since the mid-1970s, almost every jazz musician has owned a copy of the same book. It has a peach-colored cover, a chunky, 1970s-style logo, and a black plastic binding. It’s delightfully homemade-looking—like it was printed by a bunch of teenagers at a Kinkos. And inside is the … | Continue reading
Since the mid-1970s, almost every jazz musician has owned a copy of the same book. It has a peach-colored cover, a chunky, 1970s-style logo, and a black plastic binding. It’s delightfully homemade-looking—like it was printed by a bunch of teenagers at a Kinkos. And inside is the … | Continue reading
Years ago on a trip to Newfoundland, retired traveler Jackie Jansen began documenting a strangely persistent phenomenon: front doors raised high above the ground. Odder still: these elevated entries had no stairs to speak of, leaving her to wonder why. It turns out there are comp … | Continue reading
Pete Bethune is a conservationist, ripped right out of an action movie. He’s stopped whalers out in the Pacific Ocean. He rescued a dolphin held captive in an Indonesian resort. And he’s been stabbed not once, but twice. Recently, this work brought Pete to Costa Rica where his lu … | Continue reading
The Chicago River used to be completely filthy, because Chicagoans used it as an open sewer. It was teeming with both human and animal waste, and it was said to have been so thick that “a chicken could walk across it without getting her feet wet.” To fix this problem, the city of … | Continue reading
For decades, Seattle planners have been exploring a radical overhaul where the city meets the Puget Sound, much of which has now been implemented. For humans, the surface experience has changed dramatically, but below, too, other species are benefiting from attention paid to the … | Continue reading
Back in the early 1990s, movie theaters weren’t that great. The auditoriums were cramped and narrow, and the screen was dim. But in 1995, the AMC Grand 24 in Dallas changed everything. It was the very first movie megaplex in the United States. This is the gigantic, neon, big-box … | Continue reading