Monday, July 23, 2012

Kickstart the Week: 99% Invisible




Wired profiled one of my favorite podcasts last week, 99% Invisible. While it's primarily a podcast about design, heavy on architecture, it's about a lot more than that. I have stolen blog ideas from them before, but only because what they do is so neat. For someone without the mathematical brain to really get into architecture and such, and without an artistic bone in his body? It's really solid. Plus, the podcast is rarely over 15 minutes long, so it's a perfect bite-sized chunk for when I get out of the house.

99% Invisible is attempting to kickstart its third season, but with a few twists. For one, the stretch goals (as they made their goal in 24 hours) are going to help them make a truly great podcast even better. To think that a single Kickstarter campaign may be able to help them not only increase their output to 40 episodes a year (as opposed to the bi-weekly schedule they're on), but create an app that could really revolutionize the show? Incredible. Plus, if they get 5000 backers, there will be a $10000 funding match, so even a dollar might help push things way over the top.

Supporting this Kickstarter helps public radio in a myriad of ways, opens up new funding avenues, and supports a great podcast with a great idea. Definitely take a look. Beyond the jump, I've linked some of my favorite 99% Invisible episodes to get you started:

* Frozen Music: Never listen to Nirvana's "Lithium" the same way again.

* The Best Beer in the World: Pretty much guaranteed me a life of alcoholism if I ever come near this abbey...

* Vulcanite Dentures: A tale of copyright and old-school trolling.

* Nikko: Concrete Commando: The strange tale of a public space proagandist.

* Billy Possum: Better than the Teddy Bear?

* A Cheer for Samuel Plimsoll: Listen to this and you'll know why boats don't sink.

* The Sound of the Artificial World: Could be named "Why does the iPhone make that noise?"

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