Want our latest podcast reviews and episode recommendations in your inbox? Sign up here for our weekly newsletter. It’s a great thought experiment to conduct with a group of nerdy friends, and incredible to consider that a group of humans were earnestly tasked with completing such a daunting project. How can you communicate the dangers of a radioactive site to an audience so far in the future when any currently used language may, by then, be long forgotten? This episode gives some insight into a project that did exactly that, and the result is a mix of history, futurism, anthropology, design, culture, and philosophy. The episode capitalizes on the stranger-than-fiction angle 99PI handles so well. The central event here is a contest, which takes place amid the economic downturn of the 1980s in working-class America, requiring people to live on a billboard for a chance to win a house. Not only does “Billboard Boys” spool out the zany details of an almost impossible-to-believe competition, it also subtly captures the tone of early-Reagan era American society. “The Pool and the Stream” presents these odd bedfellows without sanitizing skating or over-intellectualizing its place in the history of design.Įpisode 324: Billboard Boys: The Greatest Radio Contest of All Time Less is said about skateboarding’s symbiotic relationship with an incredibly influential piece of landscape architecture: the swimming pool. This unique fusion of athleticism, gall and urban exploration is regarded by many as a dubious activity for troublemakers or slackers. Skateboarding has more than its fair share of critics. It is impossible to say the following 15 episodes are unequivocally the best the team has produced, but this list certainly provides a sample of the high-quality fare on offer from beautiful downtown Oakland, California. 99 invisible series#The show’s rise in popularity has been accompanied by a wonderful evolution in style, and I can honestly say I’ve enjoyed every period of 99% Invisible’s history, from the baby Roman minisodes to its multi-part spinoff series like producer Avery Trufelman’s Articles of Interest. The sound has gotten a little lusher, the episodes have gotten a little longer, and there’s even a forthcoming book out this fall. It’s been almost 10 years since 99PI first hit the airwaves, and the show has come a long way from its roots as a one-man podcast lovingly crafted in Mars’s bedroom. But more than that, it’s about how Mars and his wonderful team of producers see the world and interpret beauty amidst chaos. 99% Invisible is about design, as well as history. It’s narrative, journalistic podcasting like the sort you’ve certainly heard on other programs, but is always delivered with substantial takeaways that you’re bound to think about weeks and even years later. With host Roman Mars’s warm voice giving the show its enchanting effect, the podcast offers deep dives into design subjects like architecture and urban planning as well as more unusual topics that illustrate how design pervades every aspect of modern life. Listening to an episode of 99% Invisible is always a little magical.
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