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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 architecture. From award winning producer Roman Mars. Learn more at 99percentinvisible.org.
For decades, society has dealt with people with dementia and other forms of cognitive decline by storing them away in unstimulating, medicalized environments. But around the world, a new architectural movement is starting to challenge that old paradigm. Designing environments where people with dementia can live as normally as possible, until the very end.
It’s hard to overstate just how important record album art was to music in the days before people downloaded everything. Visuals were a key part of one's experience with a record or tape or CD. The design of the album cover created a first impression of what was to come. Album art was certainly important to reporter Sean Cole, one particular album by one particular band: Devo. This is the story of Devo’s first record and the fight over the arresting image of a flashy, handsome golf legend on the cover.
Plus, former 99pi EP Katie Mingle gets the backstory of the Langley Schools Music Project LP, a haunting and uplifting outsider artist masterpiece.
This episode was originally broadcast in 2018
Over a decade after Elvis Presley’s death, the king of rock & roll took over headlines once again as Americans weighed in on which portrait of Elvis would be forever immortalized on a 29 cent US postage stamp. It was put to a popular vote: should the stamp feature an image of young Elvis at the start of his rise, or an older Elvis in his iconic white jumpsuit.
The resulting Elvis stamp eventually outsold every single commemorative stamp before and since.
Over its more than 40 year journey from conception to completion, Boston’s Big Dig massive infrastructure project, which rerouted the central highway in the heart of the city, encountered every hurdle imaginable: ruthless politics, engineering challenges, secretive contractors, outright fraud and even the death of one motorist. It became a kind of poster child for big government ‘boondoggles.’ But the full story is of course much more complicated – and really represents a turning point in how America builds infrastructure.
Subscribe and Listen to the full series of The Big Dig.
This week we have two stories featuring the devil.
An infamous "training video" teaching cops how to spot and stop "satanic crimes." And a stretch of highway with the misfortune of being officially named US Route 666.
The Sydney Opera House is one of the most iconic and distinctive buildings in the world. It took a relative newcomer and architectural outsider to dream it up, but the saga of making this world heritage landmark a reality is a tale for the ages: a cautionary tale. And for Cautionary Tales, I turn to the brilliant Tim Harford. I’ve been dying to hear the story of the Sydney Opera House told in this way, and Tim and his team just nailed it, and I know you are going to love it as much as I do. Enjoy.
Brian Merchant is a tech reporter, and he'd been covering the industry for years when he started to notice a term that kept coming up. When he wrote a story that was critical of tech, he'd be accused of being a "Luddite."
Like most people, Brian knew at least vaguely what the term "Luddite" meant. But as time went on, and as Brian watched tech grow into the disruptive behemoth it is today, he started to get more curious about the actual Luddites. Who were they? And what did they really believe?
Brian has a new book out about the Luddites called Blood in the Machine. And it explores how English textile workers in the 19th century rose up against the growing trend of automation and the machines that were threatening their livelihoods.
All kinds of songs get stuck in your head. Famous pop tunes from when you were a kid, album cuts you've listened to over and over again. And then there's a category of memorable songs—the ones that we all just kind of know. Songs that somehow, without anyone’s permission, sneak their way into the collective unconscious and are now just lingering there for eternity. There’s one song that best exemplifies this phenomenon— "Who Let The Dogs Out" by the Baha Men.
The story of how that song ended up stuck in all of our brains goes back decades and spans continents. It tells us something about inspiration, and how creativity spreads, and about whether an idea can ever really belong to just one person.
In most big cities, there’s a housing crisis. And empty office buildings are creating a different crisis known to urbanists as a ‘doom loop.’ Converting an office into housing can solve both of these crises at once, using one piece of property. This solution just seems so obvious and elegant. But for all the hype around this idea, there are surprisingly few adaptive reuse projects actually underway.
The story of a voice training VHS tape that helped trans women at a time when other resources were hard to access.
The way a person's voice changes over time feels like a simple, and overlooked act of magic. Whether intentionally or subconsciously, our voices are products of our environments as much as they are part of us. Today we’re featuring an episode about voices from a series called Sounds Gay, a brilliant show about queer culture, community and music.
Plus, guest host Swan Real discusses the universality of voice training with 99pi regular host Roman Mars.
Amanda is a wife. A mother. A blogger. A Christian.
A charming, beautiful, bubbly, young woman who lives life to the fullest.
But Amanda is dying, with a secret she doesn’t want anyone to know.
She starts a blog detailing her cancer journey, and becomes an inspiration, touching and
captivating her local community as well as followers all over the world.
Until one day investigative producer Nancy gets an anonymous tip telling her to look at Amanda’s
blog, setting Nancy on an unimaginable road to uncover Amanda’s secret.
Award winning journalist Charlie Webster explores this unbelievable and bizarre, but
all-too-real tale, of a woman from San Jose, California whose secret ripped a family apart and
left a community in shock.
Scamanda is the true story of a woman whose own words held the key to her secret.
New episodes every Monday.
Follow Scamanda on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Amanda’s blog posts are read by actor Kendall Horn.
