In 1821, two Rhode Island brothers went looking for buyers for their woolen fabric, and stumbled into a lucrative, captive market: Southern slave plantations. Roman Mars and historian Seth Rockman trace the strange life of so-called “Negro cloth” — a textile category defined by n … | Continue reading
Stories about biomimicry can be catnip for design journalists. They’re catchy, and there’s something seductive about a designer borrowing from a legacy solution in nature to solve a human problem. It makes for a simple and compelling narrative. Japan’s Shinkansen is a classic exa … | Continue reading
In 1925, the world saw the birth of what just might be the greatest gadget in American History: the Brannock Device. The metal contraption transformed the way we measure feet forever, and more than a century after its invention…it has barely changed. Roman Mars and journalist Pau … | Continue reading
When reporter Olivia Humphreys had her first baby in London, the hospital sent her home with an underwhelming package: a small drawstring bag containing a few tiny samples of baby shampoo and diaper cream, and tons of coupons. And looking through the bag she couldn’t help but won … | Continue reading
In the early 1970s, Bruce Lee made nunchaku (nunchucks) cool — kids were building their own and buying them in record numbers. But the nunchucks craze coincided with something much bigger: the birth of a radical new Asian American identity. Roman Mars and historian Jeff Chang tra … | Continue reading
In 2010, A History of the World in 100 Objects premiered on BBC Radio 4 to great acclaim: a complex and interconnected history of the world told through 100 objects in the British Museum collection, presented by the museum’s then-director, Neil MacGregor. For 2026, BBC Studios de … | Continue reading
In 1982, a twelve-year-old paperboy, Johnny Gosch, vanished from a quiet Iowa street and sparked an unlikely campaign: the faces of missing children printed on milk cartons by the billions. Roman Mars and Annie Brown trace how a regional dairy campaign exploded into a national sy … | Continue reading
Family stories have a way of sticking around, even when no one can quite prove them. This week we’re sharing an episode of Family Lore, a show produced by former 99PI producer Katie Mingle. It follows the story of Charles Frederick Page, a self-taught inventor from central Louisi … | Continue reading
In 1902, an American classic was born: the teddy bear. Named after President Theodore Roosevelt, the toy became a huge hit, and sparked an idea…maybe every president from then on should have their own viral stuffed animal. Jon Mooallem tells the story of the ill-fated billy possu … | Continue reading
C. Thi Nguyen teaches philosophy at the University of Utah, and he got into the field because he’s drawn to life’s big questions. Weird, romantic, bizarre questions. What is art for? Are we just wasting our time on our dumb hobbies, or are they the best part of life? Then he star … | Continue reading
Before the Declaration of Independence was even a twinkle in the founding fathers’ eyes, there was James Otis. Journalist Jack Hitt returns to tell the wild, tragic story of America’s forgotten proto-founding father and his inflammatory 1764 pamphlet. A story that is, in many way … | Continue reading
Terms like “the cloud” and “WiFi” can make it seem like the Internet exists in the air, without wires. But that’s not true. Almost all of our online world moves around the planet not across the sky or through space, but by way of a massive complex of cables crisscrossing the glob … | Continue reading
In this episode, Roman and historians Heather Ann Thompson and Elliot Williams tell the story of the sharpened screwdriver: the object at the heart of the 1984 Bernhard Goetz subway shooting. In a difficult moment in New York City, four Black teenagers were transformed in the pub … | Continue reading
This past February, the American Numismatic Association held its annual convention in Savannah, Georgia. Numismatics is the fancy word for coins (and the study of coins), and the hall was full of small but avid fandoms: gold pieces struck from California gold rush ore, dealers in … | Continue reading
In this episode, Roman and historian Imani Perry follow the Webster Blue Back Speller from the early days of the United States, to the heart of Black intellectual life. Through the lives of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, Roman and Imani uncover how a single object bec … | Continue reading
South Africa wanted to be the first African nation to host the World Cup. They also wanted the tournament to be the start of a new chapter. During apartheid, the country was banned from the international sporting community. But in 2004, they were on the precipice of hosting socce … | Continue reading
In 1861, one man and a “gas bag” filled with hydrogen sparked America’s obsession with going higher, farther, into the unknown. In this episode, Roman and journalist Jack Hitt tell the story of Thaddeus Lowe — showman, scientist, and dreamer — whose balloon flight from Cincinnati … | Continue reading
To accompany our recent episode about Canadian content policy, producer max collins made a playlist of every artist that came up during the reporting process. You can find the full playlist on Spotify or on Amazon Music. Below, max has included some footnotes and fun facts about … | Continue reading
Before YouTube, before streaming, before anyone thought too hard about what to put on a screen while a drunk person sang “Benny and the Jets,” a small army of scrappy filmmakers was quietly getting paid to make weird little movies. Nobody was really watching them. Nobody was aski … | Continue reading
A stack of dusty paperwork, teeming with unheard voices. What do Civil War pension files reveal about one of the most successful slave rebellions in American history? In this episode, Roman and historian Edda Fields-Black trace a story of fire, flight, and freedom. It begins on a … | Continue reading
NOTE: During the production of this episode, over 120 Canadian musicians were mentioned in conversation with guests and sources—way too many to fit into an episode. As a way to shine a spotlight on the vast landscape of Canadian music, we have put together a playlist of these mus … | Continue reading
A small metal screw, cut to a precise angle. How did one country quietly decide how the modern world holds together? In this episode, Roman and historian Daniel Immerwahr tell the story of the screw and America’s fight to standardize it. In the early 20th century, nothing quite f … | Continue reading
Drug Story is an independent documentary podcast from journalist Thomas Goetz that explores the hidden history of medicine one drug at a time. Each episode uses a single medication to examine the science, politics, culture, and human stories surrounding disease and treatment. And … | Continue reading
A locked iron safe, sealed for a hundred years. Which objects did Americans choose to tell their story? “The Century Safe” was designed as a time capsule. In 1876, as America celebrated its 100th birthday, a group of citizens filled the safe with objects they trusted to tell the … | Continue reading
Watching television in the middle of the day can feel like half the words on the screen have been scrambled. Ebglyss. Bimzelx. Cobenfy. The brand names of prescription drugs have drifted so far from ordinary English that they’ve become a running cultural joke, routinely compared … | Continue reading
Jared Wilson is a seventh-generation farmer. He runs a family farm in Missouri, and like most farmers today, he’s facing a lot of challenges, including inconsistent weather and a shaky global economy. But one problem that’s been really vexing Jared for the past decade is the soft … | Continue reading
Every time you hand your passport to a customs official, there’s something inherently fraught about it. That little booklet confers enormous power depending on where you were born, and billions of people live in countries whose passports grant them little to no meaningful access … | Continue reading
This is the ninth episode of our ongoing series breaking down the U.S. Constitution. This month, Roman and Elizabeth discuss Article VI and VII, which include some odds and ends like the Debts Clause, the No Religious Test Clause, and the process for ratification. But tucked into … | Continue reading
Driving into New York City from the north, an unavoidable cluster of thirty-five identical brick high-rises dominates the horizon just past the Bronx border. All of them over twenty stories tall, all with the same brick facades. They’re easily mistaken for a public housing projec … | Continue reading
In Major League Baseball, there are four umpires on the field: one behind each base, and one behind home plate. The home plate ump has arguably the most important job, calling balls and strikes. A strike is basically any hittable pitch, something over the plate, between the batte … | Continue reading
A brightly lit, entirely empty 7-Eleven parking lot in Brooklyn looked like a miracle to Kelly Prime. The 99% Invisible editor and her friends just needed a quick spot to leave their 2011 Mazda 6 while grabbing takeout next door. Fifteen minutes later, the car was gone. Assuming … | Continue reading
During the summer of 2023, Phoenix, Arizona, endured a streak of heat so unrelenting that saguaro cacti were collapsing in the streets. For thirty-one consecutive days, temperatures broke 110 degrees. Playgrounds sat empty. People navigated the city by dashing between buildings c … | Continue reading
Walking through San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood with an empty cup in hand after grabbing a slice of pizza at Tony’s, 99pi host Roman Mars faced a surprisingly difficult urban challenge: finding a public trash can. This minor frustration opens up an investigation into one … | Continue reading
This is the eighth episode of our ongoing series breaking down the U.S. Constitution. This month, Roman and Elizabeth discuss Article V, which lays out the process to amend the Constitution, alongside historian and author Jill Lepore. Jill Lepore is an American History professor … | Continue reading
Navigating Los Angeles by car is a notoriously soul-crushing endeavor, particularly when you find yourself trapped in the kind of infrastructural purgatory locals affectionately call the “Devil’s three-way”—the chaotic, multi-signal convergence of Fairfax, Olympic, and San Vicent … | Continue reading
During the early days of the pandemic lockdowns, 99% Invisible producer Christopher Johnson found himself trapped in a high-rise apartment in Washington Heights, tormented by the relentless, looping jingle of idling Mr. Softee ice cream trucks. Armed with the knowledge that local … | Continue reading
For a brief period at the turn of the 20th century, much of the Western world believed that the ultimate cosmic question had been answered: humanity was not alone. The public was captivated by the idea of an advanced alien civilization living on Mars. Science journalist David Bar … | Continue reading
Just off the southwestern coast of the United Kingdom, the Isles of Scilly form a jagged, treacherous archipelago that has claimed hundreds of ships. The most infamous of these disasters unfolded on a stormy October night in 1707, when a British naval fleet crashed headlong into … | Continue reading
This is the seventh episode of our ongoing series breaking down the U.S. Constitution. This month, Roman and Elizabeth discuss Article IV, which outlines the relationship between states and between states and the federal government. They add the 10th Amendment to the conversation … | Continue reading
The longest continuous fence in the world runs over 5,000 kilometers across the southeastern corner of Australia. The Dingo Barrier Fence is a simple wire structure, but this unassuming boundary has fundamentally transformed the ecology of an entire country. This massive barrier … | Continue reading
Los Algodones, a small town on the northern tip of Mexico, has earned the nickname “Molar City.” Every year, over a million people (mostly American retirees) cross the border into this community of 7,000 residents. They are not there for the beaches or the culture, but for the ne … | Continue reading
In 1928, a strange phenomenon was sweeping the state of Idaho. A Boise resident might wake up on a typical Monday morning, drag themself out of bed, and they would hop in their car to drive to work, only to realize that their license plate had been stolen right off of their car. … | Continue reading
Last summer, Bryan Vance found himself in an argument with a stranger on Reddit. Vance, a Portland-based journalist who runs Stumptown Savings, a newsletter covering local grocery deals, had been accused of using ChatGPT to write his content. The evidence? His use of em dashes. “ … | Continue reading
This is is the fifth episode of our ongoing series breaking down the U.S. Constitution. This month, Roman and Elizabeth discuss Article III, which establishes the judicial branch, alongside New York Times chief legal affairs correspondent Adam Liptak. Mr. Liptak’s deep of knowled … | Continue reading
In any classroom in Zimbabwe, you are likely to find children with a mix of names—indigenous names in Shona, Ndebele, Tsonga, Venda or any one of the numerous other ethnic groups. You will most certainly come across European names, such as Primrose, possibly one or two Janets, a … | Continue reading
Years ago, the Third Coast International Audio Festival hosted a competition for short-form audio documentaries called ShortDocs. The idea for the challenge was simple: invite people to make three-minute stories inspired by a theme or prompt. Listening back to these documentaries … | Continue reading
Years ago, the Third Coast International Audio Festival hosted a competition for short-form audio documentaries called ShortDocs. The idea for the challenge was simple: invite people to make three-minute stories inspired by a theme or prompt. Listening back to these documentaries … | Continue reading
Michael Bierut is one of the best known designers in America. You probably interact with a design from Michael and his team every day. Like the Verizon V checkmark, or the logos for Yahoo! and Slack. Or redesigns for brands like Mastercard, Saks Fifth Avenue and the New York Jets … | Continue reading