99% Invisible

Esperanto is what linguists call a “constructed language.” It isn’t attached to a nation or a region, and it didn’t evolve from another language over time. Instead, nearly 150 years ago, someone decided to sit down and design the whole thing from scratch.
That someone was L. L. Zamenhof, also known as Doktoro Esperanto. He created this language with the hope that it would unite the world under one shared tongue. Today, reporter Katie Thornton tells the story of Doktoro Esperanto’s dream, and what we can all still learn from Esperanto right now.
For more, check out Katie's story on Esperanto in Harper's Magazine.

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In 1932, the Women's House of Detention—New York City's first women's prison—opened in the heart of Greenwich Village. It was opened to make "wayward" women quiet, private, and properly feminine. And the building had one unique feature originally meant to be a sort of kindness—a special kind of window that the women inside could open. Roman Mars and historian Hugh Ryan trace how those special windows had an impact that nobody could have predicted—helping to build a mecca of gay America and, ultimately, a movement.

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This episode is sponsored by Acura.
From the outside, the building is a light gray spiral, and from the inside, the art is displayed on one long ramp that curves up towards a glass skylight in the ceiling. We’re going to take the greatness of this building as a given. What we’re going to focus on are the oddities, the accretions, the interventions that reveal a different kind of genius. Not just the genius of Frank Lloyd Wright, and his bold, original vision, but the genius of all the people that made this building function, adapt, and grow over the decades.

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A desert train built for Tony Hawk leads into the strange and thoughtful world of N.D. Austin, a designer of real-life experiences.

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Football helmets can prevent devastating injuries, but they may also help make an inherently violent game feel safer than it really is.

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