Call of Duty: Free
99% Invisible16 Feb 2022

Call of Duty: Free

On the west coast of Ireland, on the banks of an estuary dividing county Limerick from county Clare, lies a small town called Shannon. But Shannon is not a quaint fishing village or farming community. Its industry is its airport. And Shannon Airport is big. It handles up to 1.7 million passengers and 20,000 flights a year, most of them from other countries. It looks like a cosmopolitan international airport, but it has a unique claim to fame: the world's first airport duty-free store.

Today, the store has what you would expect -- designer perfumes, jewelry and various fine foods, with a lot of local (in this case Irish) products in particular. But like the area around the airport, the shop started out small, with a local boy from the area who would go on to change the world of tax-free commerce in and beyond Shannon.

Call of Duty: Free

Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and a whole week early.

Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Episoder(776)

Smart Stuff with Justin and Roman- Founder Effect

Smart Stuff with Justin and Roman- Founder Effect

The long-awaited return of Smart Stuff with Justin and Roman, featuring Justin McElroy and Roman Mars. Make your mark. Go to radiotopia.fm to donate today. Everyone should listen to My Brother, My Bro...

15 Des 20195min

The ELIZA Effect

The ELIZA Effect

Throughout Joseph Weizenbaum's life, he liked to tell this story about a computer program he’d created back in the 1960s as a professor at MIT. It was a simple chatbot named ELIZA that could interact ...

11 Des 201945min

The Infantorium

The Infantorium

“Incubators for premature babies were, oddly enough, a phenomenon at the turn of the 20th century that was available at state and county fairs and amusement parks rather than hospitals,” explains Laur...

3 Des 201934min

Mannequin Pixie Dream Girl

Mannequin Pixie Dream Girl

In the 1930s, Lester Gaba was designing department store windows and found the old wax mannequins uninspiring. So he designed a new kind of mannequin that was sleek, simple, but conveyed style and per...

27 Nov 201941min

Cautionary Tales

Cautionary Tales

Galileo tried to teach us that adding more and more layers to a system intended to avert disaster often makes catastrophe all the more likely. His basic lesson has been ignored in nuclear power plants...

19 Nov 201931min

Ubiquitous Icons: Peace, Power, and Happiness

Ubiquitous Icons: Peace, Power, and Happiness

There are symbols all around us that we take for granted, like the lightning strike icon, which indicates that something is high voltage. Or a little campfire to indicate that something is flammable. ...

13 Nov 201935min

How To Pick A Pepper

How To Pick A Pepper

The chili pepper is the pride of New Mexico, but they have a problem with their beloved crop. There just aren’t enough workers to pick the peppers. Picking chili peppers can be especially grueling wor...

5 Nov 201935min

Great Bitter Lake Association

Great Bitter Lake Association

A little-known bit of world history about a rag tag group of sailors stranded for years in the Suez Canal at the center of a war. Great Bitter Lake Association Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to liste...

30 Okt 201933min

Populært innen Business og økonomi

stopp-verden
lydartikler-fra-aftenposten
dine-penger-pengeradet
e24-podden
rss-penger-polser-og-politikk
rss-borsmorgen-okonominyhetene
utbytte
pengepodden-2
finansredaksjonen
livet-pa-veien-med-jan-erik-larssen
rss-sunn-okonomi
morgenkaffen-med-finansavisen
tid-er-penger-en-podcast-med-peter-warren
okonomiamatorene
pengesnakk
lederpodden
rss-markedspuls-2
rss-andelige-tanker-med-camillo
rss-fa-makro
stormkast-med-valebrokk-stordalen