99% Invisible

This episode explores the messy, beautiful bricks hiding across Chicago. It promises a closer look at the city through one of its most ordinary materials, turning walls and facades into something worth noticing.

The episode traces the AA sobriety chip from a familiar recovery token to a surprisingly broad story about Prohibition, women’s suffrage, and American ideas of gender, religion, and morality. Jamie Loftus follows the object’s origins and the cultural history packed into its small, plastic form.

This episode traces how a Swiss mountain call crossed the Atlantic and became part of country music’s sound. It promises a cultural history of a surprising musical migration and the way one vocal style helped shape an American genre.

The Western Electric 500 Series Telephone is the focus here, as Roman Mars and Adam Savage dig into how it became the standard phone for homes and offices for more than 50 years. The episode looks at what made it better than what came before and what may have been lost when it disappeared.

The Rocky Statue traces how a prop from the Rocky films became one of Philadelphia’s most beloved monuments. It also digs into the long-running fight over where the statue belonged and why that question mattered so much.