Complete & chronological playlist of the first 284 episodes Roman Mars' wonderful program, 99 Percent Invisible. Ninety two hours of fascinating stuff! This is not automated. I update it when new episodes are uploaded to Soundcloud.

Unfortunately, the last update to the official account was at the end of 2017 & I have been unable to get an answer as to whether 99% Invisible will be further updated on Soundcloud. I've switched to Stitcher for personal listening.

For the latest episodes go go https://99percentinvisible.org/

99% INVISIBLE complete playlist

R,SANTOS

99% Invisible

99% Invisible - First 40 Episodes

A tiny radio show about design, architecture & the 99% invisible activity that shapes our world.

99% @rch

99% invisible

Chicago's biggest design achievement probably isn’t one of its amazing skyscrapers, but the Chicago River, a waterway disguised as a remnant of the natural landscape. But it isn't natural, not really. It’s hard to tell when you see the river, but it’s going the wrong way. It should flow into Lake Michigan, but instead fresh water from Lake Michigan flows backwards, into the city. The Chicago River is, in large part, a carefully-designed extension of the city’s sewer system. 

Reporter Dan Weissmann talked with Richard Cahan (author of "The Lost Panoramas: When Chicago Changed its River and the Land Beyond") about the amazing lengths the city went to, over the course of several decades, to carry away the sewage that threatened to drown Chicago.

99% Invisible-86- Reversal Of Fortune

If you were a movie star in the market for a mansion in 1930s Los Angeles, there was a good chance you might call on Wallace Neff.

Neff wasn't just an architect--he was a starchitect. One of his most famous projects was the renovation of  Pickfair, the estate owned by the iconic silent film actress Mary Pickford, and her husband Douglas Fairbanks. When the couple moved into Pickfar, the house sat on a nameless street in an empty neighborhood called Beverly Hills. If you were lucky enough to be invited to dinner at Pickfair you might find yourself seated next to Babe Ruth, the King of Spain or Albert Einstein. Life magazine called Pickfair “only slightly less important than the white house, and much more fun.” Neff designed estates for Charlie Chaplin, Judy Garland and Groucho Marx. His Libby Ranch is now owned by Reese Witherspoon.

But at the end of his life, Wallace Neff lived in a 1,000 square foot concrete bubble. And Neff believed that this simple dome was his greatest architectural achievements.

Los Angeles-based reporter David Weinberg spoke with historian Jeffrey Head, author of No Nails, No Lumber: The Bubble Houses of Wallace Neff.  David also spoke with Kathy Miles, who grew up in Igloo Village; Steve Roden, an artist and current resident of the last remaining bubble house in the US; and architect Stefanos Polyzoides, who has his practice in a classic Spanish/Mediterranean-style Wallace Neff building.

We also hear from Dakar-based producer Juliana Friend, who was nice enough to go check on the bubbles over there.

A different version of this story originally aired on KCRW as part of their Independent Producer Project.

David Weinberg is also the brains behind Random Tape, an audio experiment in, well, random tape.

99% Invisible-89- Bubble Houses

99% Invisible-01- 99% Noise

99% Invisible-02- 99% 180

99% Invisible-03- 99% Reality (only)

99% Invisible-04- 99% Details

99% Invisible-05- 99% Forgotten

99% Invisible-06- 99% Symbolic

99% Invisible-08- 99% Free Parking

99% Invisible-11- 99% Undesigned

Cities are pretty robust organisms, they tend to survive even when put under tremendous stress and strain. Local industries rise and fall, people immigrate and emigrate, but most of these changes happen over decades. What happens to a city when its purpose is stripped away virtually overnight? Bonn was the quiet, unlikely capital of West Germany and then the newly unified Germany for 50 years, and then the Cold War ended and the seat of government was moved back to its historic home of Berlin. Ten years after the move, Bonn is finding its new identity and purpose, but hidden clues in the urban landscape remind us of the city it used to be.
Cyrus Farivar takes us on a tour of his neighborhood in what used to be the diplomatic quarter of Bonn with local historian and tour guide Michael Wenzel. Farivar is the science and technology editor at Deutsche Welle English and the author of The Internet of Elsewhere – about the history and effects of the Internet on different countries around the world.


99% Invisible-36- Super Bon Bonn

If I asked you to close your eyes and mimic the action of using one of the simple human interfaces of everyday life, you could probably do it. Without having a button to push, you could close your eyes and pretend push a button, and that action would accurately reflect the action of pushing a real button. The same goes for flipping a switch or turning a door knob. If you closed your eyes and faked the movement, it would sync up with its real world use.
Now if I asked you to do the same with a car’s steering wheel, you’d think you’d be able to describe steering accurately and mime the correct movements with your hands in the air, but you’d be wrong. Very, very wrong. You’d probably kill a bunch of imaginary people.
Our friends at Humans in Design, Tristan Cooke and Tom Nelson, bring us this story about how our brain knows how to steer without really knowing how to steer and what that means for steering wheel design. They interviewed Dr. Steve Cloete, from The University of Queensland, who conducted the blind driver studies.


99% Invisible-37- The Steering Wheel

If Dennis Baxter and Bill Whiston are doing their job right, you probably don’t notice that they’re doing their job. But they are so good at doing their job, that you probably don’t even know that their job exists at all. They are sound designers for televised sporting events. Their job is to draw the audience into the action and make sports sound as exciting as possible, and this doesn’t mean they put a bunch of microphones on the field. This episode of 99% Invisible is produced by Peregrine Andrews for Falling Tree Productions. It is an extract from a much longer, and really stunning doc called “The Sound of Sport.” 

99% Invisible-38- Sound of Sport

It's hard to imagine a place where more desperate and depressing drama unfolds on a daily basis than a family courthouse- custody battles, abuse, divorce- and if you were to design a place to reflect and amplify that misery, not mitigate it, it'd probably take the form of the old New York County Family Courthouse in Lower Manhattan.

The original shiny black cube, built in 1975, was referred to as the “Darth Vader building” by court employees (presumably after 1977). The foreboding and intimidating structure is primarily criticized in relation to its function as a family courthouse, which should strive to inspire a feeling of trust, authority, and (one hopes) inclusion.

The building was remodeled in 2006. The bones are largely the same, but the shiny, black cladding is gone, replaced by a more conventional grey/beige. The problematic entrance to the building has been completely opened up, making ingress and egress a much less daunting proposition. To quote our 99% Invisible reporter this week, Brett Myers, “walking into the building is no longer like being consumed by a beast.”  

But a little something was lost in the facelift. The original building was definitely not boring and commanded your attention. I don’t know if the same can be said for the current design. Modern design principles and cultural preservation are not necessarily at loggerheads, but when they do come into conflict, it’s not always easy answer which ideology should win.


99% Invisible-39- Darth Vader Family Courthouse

In the center of San Francisco, there is a plaza with no benches. Its central feature at the entrance of the plaza is a unique fountain that was designed by Lawrence Halprin in 1975.The water shoots out at various angles, from inside a sunken pit, filled with large granite slabs. It’s a design that kind of pulls you in and invites you to take the steps down to the water and climb in between the hulking stones. And that’s part of the problem.
In 2004, radio producer Ben Temchine, created a really fantastic documentary of UN Plaza, called “The Biography of 100,000 Square Feet” that first aired on my first radio program called Invisible Ink in May of 2004. (Yep another "invisible" show)
The documentary really takes a hard look at UN Plaza when it was really at its worst and asks the question, is there a point where good the intentions and idealism of a design become so removed from reality, that it actually borders on negligence?


99% Invisible-39X- The Biography of 100,000 Square Feet

Like many cities in Central Europe, Warsaw is made up largely of grey, ugly, communist block-style architecture. Except for one part:  The Old Town.
Walking through this historic district, it’s just like any other quaint European city.  There are tourist shops, horse-drawn carriage rides, church spires. The buildings are beautiful--but they are not original.  
During World War II, Nazi forces razed more than 80% of Warsaw.  After Soviet troops took over, much of the city was rebuilt in the with communist style: fast, cheap, and big.  They built apartment blocks, wide avenues, and heavy grey buildings.  It was communist ideology in architectural form.
But when it came to the historic district of Warsaw-- the Old Town and a long connecting section called the Royal Route--they decided not just to rebuild, but to restore.  Builders would use the same stones, and use special kilns to make special bricks to preserve its authenticity.  After six years of reconstruction, the new Old Town was opened.  Poles were ecstatic to have it back.  Even in the West, it was seen as a triumph of the human spirit. 
But here's the thing: Warsaw’s historic Old Town is not a replica of the original. It’s a re-imagining. An historic city that never really was. 
Reporters and producers Amy Drozdowska and Dave McGuire talk with social anthropologist Michael Murawski about the fake recreation of Old Town and what it means to modern Warsaw.


99% Invisible-72- New Old Town

Wherever there is sufficient demand to move between two points of differing elevation, there are stairs. In some hilly neighborhoods of California--if you know where to look--you'll find public, outdoor staircases.

The large number of hidden public staircases is part of what makes California so great.  Charles Fleming is one of the world experts of coastal California's public stairs. He has documented and mapped walking routes through nearly every useable public staircase in San Francisco's East Bay, as well as in Los Angeles (where he lives).  Charles published his findings in two walking guides, appropriately titled Secret Stairs.

Producer Sam Greenspan met with Charles in the Pacific Palisades, where people from all over Los Angeles had gathered to attend one of Charles' monthly stair walks.

99% Invisible-75- Secret Staircases

On the streets of early 20th Century America, nothing moved faster than 10 miles per hour. Responsible parents would tell their children, “Go outside, and play in the streets. All day.”

And then the automobile happened. And then automobiles began killing thousands of children, every year.

Many viewed the car as a death machine. One newspaper cartoon even compared the car to Moloch, the god to whom the Ammonites supposedly sacrificed their children.

At first, pedestrian deaths were considered public tragedies. Parades were held in dozens of cities to commemorate the dead children. Cities built monuments. Mothers of children killed in the streets are given a special White Star to honor their loss.

The main cause for these deaths was that the rules of the street were vastly different than they are today. A street functioned like a city park, or a pedestrian mall, where you could move in any direction without really thinking about it. The only moving hazards were animals and other people.  

But automotive interests wanted to claim the streets for cars. 
So they put forth a radical idea--cars weren't to blame, it was human recklessness. They found that they could exonerate the machine by placing the blame on individuals. 

They also coined a new term: "Jaywalking."

99% Invisible-76- The Modern Moloch

A tiny radio show about design, architecture &amp; the 99% invisible activity that shapes our world.

http://99percentinvisible.org/

New episodes every Wednesday.

On the radio on 91.7 KALW in San Francisco. Fridays at 7:35am and 4:30pm, Saturdays at 8:35am.  And public radio stations across the country.

Created by Roman Mars.
