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 Dec 201945min
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 Dec 201934min
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
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
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
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
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
Audio Guide to the Imperfections of a Perfect Masterpiece
To help celebrate its 60th anniversary, the Guggenheim Museum teamed up with 99% Invisible to offer visitors a guided audio experience of the museum. Even if you've never been to the Guggenheim Museum...
23 Okt 201927min
