99% Invisible

From TV commercials and branded soda cans to Emily in Paris spon-con, the Olympics are once again everywhere. In the Olympic spirit, we?re bringing you four stories about the games in all their international, theatrical glory.

In the first story, Christopher Johnson introduces the obscure, non-traditional sports from a forgotten part of Olympic history. The second story, by Chris Berube, offers a glimpse into the financial strain brought about by Montreal?s host venue for the 1976 games. In Vivian Le?s third story, the opening ceremony for Seoul?s 1988 Olympics begins on an unfortunate note. The final story, by Avery Trufelman, proposes a twist on the traditional Olympic host-country format.

The 2024 Olympics Spectacular

NEWS: We've got 99PI Power Broker Breakdown merch! Visit 99pi.org/store.

This is the seventh official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro. 

This week, Roman and Elliott sit down with Pete Buttigieg, the US Secretary of Transportation. One of his major responsibilities as Secretary is overseeing the implementation of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which has contributed billions of dollars to infrastructure projects around the country.

Secretary Buttigieg was also responsible for several major infrastructure projects when he was mayor of South Bend, Indiana. And he?s talked about the importance of acknowledging and dismantling the racism built into transportation systems around the country ? somewhat paraphrasing The Power Broker ? and has gotten a lot of pushback for it.

On today?s show, Elliott Kalan and Roman Mars will cover the second half of Part 5 and the first section of Part 6 (Chapters 27 through Chapter 32), discussing the major story beats and themes.

The Power Broker #07: Sec. Pete Buttigieg

Join the discussion on Discord and our Subreddit.

When you hear the word "river," you probably picture a majestic body of water flowing through a natural habitat. Well, the LA River looks nothing like that. Most people who see it probably mistake it for a giant storm drain. It's a deep trapezoidal channel with steep concrete walls, and a flat concrete bottom. Los Angeles was founded around this river. But decades ago it was confined in concrete so that, for better or worse, the city could become the sprawling metropolis that it is today. All these years later the county is still grappling with the consequences of those actions.

Reported by Gillian Jacobs, guest hosted by 99PI producer, Vivian Le.

A River Runs Through Los Angeles

When you go to a concert, you might try to get there right when the doors open. Or perhaps you take your time and skip the opening act. But generally, you want to be there when the show starts. In February, everyone who went to a concert in Halberstadt, Germany, showed up 23 years late. The performance is of a piece called ORGAN2/ASLSP. ASLSP stands for ?as slow as possible,? which is how the composer meant for it to be played, and this particular day would involve a chord change. The last time ORGAN2/ASLSP had a chord change was in 2022, and this new chord will play until the next change, in August, 2026. There is a change the year after that, and the following year, and so on, until the year 2640. The full performance is meant to last 639 years. Reporter Gabe Bullard travels to Germany to witness the chord change and to discover why such a concert is even happening in the first place.

As Slow As Possible

It?s hard to overstate the vastness of the Skid Row neighborhood in Los Angeles. It spans roughly 50 blocks, which is about a fifth of the entire downtown area of Los Angeles. It?s very clear when you?ve entered Skid Row. The sidewalks are mostly occupied by makeshift homes. A dizzying array of tarps and tents stretch out for blocks, improvised living structures sitting side by side.

The edge of Skid Row is clearly defined and it wasn?t drawn by accident.  It?s the result of a very specific plan to keep homeless people on one side and development on the other. And, perhaps surprisingly to outsiders: it?s a plan that Skid Row residents and their allies actually designed and fought for.

The Containment Plan

When two Stanford graduate students set out to create a new kind of cigarette that wouldn?t kill them, they didn?t foresee all the obstacles that lay ahead?or the powerful forces their invention would unleash. Nearly 10 years after the launch of the JUUL, Backfired: The Vaping Wars asks: Could e-cigarettes have been the solution to one of the world?s most pressing public health problems?or was this technology doomed to introduce a whole new generation to nicotine, and end up perpetuating an intractable addiction?

Backfired is the latest podcast from Prologue Projects, the award-winning team behind Slow Burn, Fiasco, and Think Twice: Michael Jackson. Backfired is a show about the business of unintended consequences?what happens when solving one problem inadvertently leads to a host of new ones?

In this tale of opportunity, addiction, and good intentions gone awry, hosts Leon Neyfakh and Arielle Pardes offer a definitive account of Juul Labs? rise and fall, as well as the ubiquitous illegal vape market that sprouted up in its wake. Through dozens of original interviews, they gain access to the key players who got swept up?sometimes unwittingly?in the firestorm that reshaped the culture of nicotine.

Backfired: The Vaping Wars

This is the sixth official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro. 

This week, Roman and Elliott sit down with Mike Schur, who created the critically acclaimed NBC comedy The Good Place, and co-created Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn 99, Rutherford Falls, and Netflix?s upcoming, A Classic Spy. Prior to Parks, Michael spent four years as a writer-producer on the Emmy Award-winning NBC hit The Office.

Mike also happens to be a big fan of The Power Broker, and has cited the book as his inspiration behind Parks & Rec.

On today?s show, Elliott Kalan and Roman Mars will cover the first part of Part 5 of the book (Chapters 25 through Chapter 26), discussing the major story beats and themes.

The Power Broker #6: Mike Schur

Join the discussion on Discord and our Subreddit.

After Hurricane Camille caused widespread death and destruction along the US Gulf Coast in 1969, two scientists created the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale as a way to quickly warn the public when dangerous storms were on the way. Today, we?re still using the scale and its system of ranking storms as Categories 1 to 5. But in the 55 years since the scale was created, hurricanes have become more frequent, and they have gotten bigger, faster, more devastating. There's now debate among meteorologists about whether the scale is obsolete, and it may be time for something new.

Category 6

The leaf blower is one of the most hated objects in the modern world. They?re loud, they pollute, and? how important is a leafless lawn anyway? In a lot of towns and cities, the gas-powered leaf blower has been banned. In others, there are strict guidelines on where and when they can be used. In Los Angeles, California, the leaf blower has never gone quiet, but the war to ban them has been raging for decades.

The Los Angeles Leaf Blower Wars

For a long time, the Court operated under what was called Legal Formalism. Legal formalism said that the job of any judge or justice was incredibly narrow. It was to basically look at the question of the case in front of them, check that question against any existing laws, and then make a decision. Unlike today, no one was going out of their way to hear what economists or sociologists or historians thought. Judges were just sticking to law books. The rationale for this way of judging was that if you always and only look at clean, dry law the decisions would be completely objective.

In the late 19th, early 20th century a movement rose up to challenge legal formalism. They called themselves the legal realists. Fred Schauer, professor of law at University of Virginia, says the Realists felt that the justices weren?t actually as objective as they said they were. "Supreme Court justices were often making decisions based on their own political views, their own economic views, and would disguise it in the language of precedence or earlier decisions," says Schauer. The realists said lets just accept that reality and wanted to arm the judges with more information so those judges could make more informed decisions.
For a long time the debate between realists and formalists had been mostly theoretical. That is until the arrival of the Brandeis Brief. The Brandeis brief came during a pivotal court case in the early 20th century. And the man at the center of that case was a legal realist and progressive reformer named Louis Brandeis.

Fact Checking the Supreme Court

In late 2018, two hundred people gathered at The Explorer?s Club in New York City. The building was once a clubhouse for famed naturalists and explorers. Now it?s an archive of ephemera and rarities from pioneering expeditions around the globe. But this latest gathering was held to celebrate the first biological census of its kind ?an effort to count all of the squirrels in New York City?s Central Park. Squirrels were purposefully introduced into our cities in the 1800s, and when their population exploded, we lost track of how many there are.

2024 update: We have a number!

Uptown Squirrel

Los Angeles actually used to have a massive electric railway system in the early 1900s, called the Red Car. Jake Berman, the author of The Lost Subways of North America, tells us about how, time after time, when North American cities seemed just inches away from having a robust, utopian future of fast, reliable, and convenient public transportation systems, something gets in the way. That thing is sometimes dysfunctional local politics, sometimes it?s bureaucracy. Sometimes it?s the way our infrastructure favors cars over mass transit, and too often, it?s racism.

583- The Lost Subways of North America

This is the fifth official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro. 

This week, Roman and Elliott also sit down with Brandy Zadrozny, a senior reporter for NBC News who covers misinformation, conspiracy theories, and the internet. Brandy recently finished The Power Broker, and she?s got a great perspective on what the book says about the press and its relationship to power, what has changed in journalism, and what has remained the same.

On today?s show, Elliott Kalan and Roman Mars will cover the last section of Part 4 of the book (Chapters 21 through Chapter 24), discussing the major story beats and themes.

The Power Broker #5: Brandy Zadrozny

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In the twentieth century, the jetpack became synonymous with the idea of a ?futuristic society.? Appearing in cartoons and magazines, it felt like a matter of time before people could ride a jetpack to work. But jetpacks never became a mainstream technology, leaving many to wonder... why did they fall off the radar? 

582- Rocket Man

The Howdy Doody Show is one of those pieces of 1950s ephemera that has come to symbolize mid-century American childhood. For over a decade, every weeknight at 5pm, kids all across the country would sit down in front of their parents? tiny televisions and take in the wild west adventures of Buffalo Bob and his puppet sidekick Howdy Doody.

The show was disproportionately important in the history of television. It was the first television program to reach 1,000 episodes, one of the first shows to broadcast in color, and it pioneered new ways of marketing products to children. But in the early days of the medium, especially when Howdy Doody first started, the world of television was strange. In many ways, the story of Howdy Doody is the story of the weird, wild-west days of early TV. A story in which programmers, advertisers, artists and money men were inventing everything as they went along. Starting with what to put on television in the first place.

581- It's Howdy Doody Time!

Recently we published an episode called Towers of Silence. It's about how the Parsis in India are grappling with the loss of vultures and how it changed something very intimate and meaningful for the community. It was reported by our own Lasha Madan and it is epic and it is beautiful. So first of all, go listen to that story if you haven't heard it. It's so good. 

On the one hand, it's a very specific story, it's about a unique set of circumstances that happened to a very specific community. But it also feels universally relevant. Because it's a story about death and how we choose to transition out of this world. It's about how we might react when there?s a major cultural shift that we cannot control. And importantly it is about a keystone species collapse, which is something we are on track to see more of in these times. Lasha Madan collected a ton of information about vulture conservation in their reporting but it didn't quite fit into the original story that we wanted to tell but it's so vital and interesting that we're releasing this bonus episode to cover it all.

Mr. Yuk is a neon green circular sticker with a cartoon face on it. His face is scrunched up with his eyes squeezed tight and his tongue is sticking out of its mouth. It's the face you make when you taste something disgusting. He's the pictorial embodiment of the sentiment of yuck. Aptly enough: he was designed to be the symbol for hazardous substances, aimed at deterring children from ingesting them. The idea what that if you saw a Mr. Yuk sticker on something around the house, it meant that that something was poison.

Friend of the show, Gillian Jacobs, is a BIG FAN of Mr Yuk, who turns out to be a hometown hero of her beloved Pittsburgh, and talked Roman through the origins of the mean, green face that was meant to save children from their worst impulses.

Plus, we revisit another story about warning symbols from our archive: the quest to find a symbol that would warn future humans of dangerous radiation 10,000 years in the future.

Mr Yuk

Situated right in downtown Mumbai, India is an area of about 55 acres of dense, overgrown forest. In one of the most populous cities in the world, this is a place where peacocks roam freely -- a space out of time. This forest is protected by a religious community. It has survived in a relatively undeveloped state in the middle of this gargantuan city. Importantly, it?s also home to an ancient tradition in crisis -- one that is central to the lives (and deaths) of a particular population.

There?s a certain point in this forest beyond which almost no one can step -- only special caretakers of these grounds can go any further. They go by many names: khandia, nassassalar, pallbearer, corpse bearer. Their work here is holy. They carry dead bodies to their final resting place ? atop stone structures that stand gray against the lush green. These buildings are called Towers of Silence.

Towers of Silence

This is the fourth official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro. 

Roman and Elliott also sit down with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the U.S. representative for New York's 14th congressional district, who describes the lasting impact Moses? highways have made on her district, and her own philosophy when it comes to political power and bringing ambitious projects to life.

On today?s show, Elliott Kalan and Roman Mars will cover the second section of Part 4 of the book (Chapters 16 through the end of Chapter 20), discussing the major story beats and themes.

The Power Broker #4: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Join the discussion on Discord and our Subreddit.

This week we're featuring an episode from The Sporkful's series on the creation of "Anything's Pastable," Dan Pashman's new pasta cookbook.

Dan talks with Roman about how this massive project came to be and all the design decisions required to put together a cookbook.

And then, in part two of ?Anything?s Pastable,? Dan embarks on an epic trip across Italy in search of lesser-known pasta dishes ? and to learn about the evolution of pasta more broadly. He starts in Rome, where food writer Katie Parla reveals a shocking truth about pasta. Then an Italian food historian challenges Dan?s thinking about carbonara. Finally, he heads south to meet a chef who was there when a regional specialty called spaghetti all?assassina (?assassin?s spaghetti?) was invented. All of this leads Dan to wonder: What does evolution look like in a food culture that?s so often depicted in sepia tones? And what?s his place in that process?

Preorder Dan?s cookbook today (including signed copies), and see if he?s visiting a city near you on his tour of book signings and live podcast tapings with special guests! Follow Dan on Instagram to see photos and videos from the Anything?s Pastable journey.

Anything's Pastable: Eat Sauté Love

Hailing from central African cities of Brazzaville and Kinshasa, sapeurs have become increasingly recognizable around the world. Since the 1970s, sapeurs (from: le sape, short for "Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes") have been known for donning technicolored three-piece suits with flamboyant accessories like golden walking sticks and leopard-print fedoras, and then cat-walking through their city streets.

In recent years, Solange, Kendrick and SZA have all featured sapeurs in their music videos. The iconic British menswear designer Paul Smith did a whole spring line of sapeur-inspired suits and bowler hats.

The Society of Ambiance Makers and Elegant Persons

A chambre de bonne is usually one small room, on the top floor of a five- or six-story apartment building, and it?s usually just big enough to fit a bed and a table. It?s affordable housing in a city where finding housing is nearly impossible. Reporter Jeanne Boëzec tells about the history of the chambre de bonne apartments, and how while cute, they are also cramped and can be unpleasant spaces for people who have to live there, a living embodiment of the gap between the rich in Paris and everyone else.

Chambre de Bonne

This is the third and final episode in a three-part series of Roman Mars recording on-location guides to the design features and interesting spots in cities he loves. 

Roman moved to Athens, Georgia, to pursue a PhD in plant genetics, but dropped out and got into the local music and art scene instead, and started making his way toward radio.

Roman Mars Describes Athens GA As It Is

Note: This series is made possible by the all-new 2024 Lexus GX and SiriusXM. 

A few years back, journalist Lauren Ober was diagnosed with autism. She then made a podcast about her experience called The Loudest Girl in the World. And she found herself imagining a fantasy world where everything is tailored to Lauren?s very specific autistic needs. And she called this magical imagined place, wonderfully devoid of overwhelming stimuli "Autism Pleasantville."

"Obviously," Ober notes, "there?s not a one-size fits all diagnosis or even definition of autism ... as the autism adage goes: 'If you know one autistic person?you know one autistic person.' But despite our wide variety of needs, I wanted to know how design is evolving to better accommodate us" -- how were ideals being handled in the real world.

Autism Pleasantville

In the middle of the 20th century, the small town of Jasper, Indiana did something that no other city had done before: they made garbage illegal. The city would still collect some things, like soup cans and plastics, but yucky junk, like food waste, wouldn't get picked up.

This change was made possible by a new appliance: the garbage disposer ? that little grinding machine at the bottom of a lot of kitchen sinks.

The Monster Under the Sink

This is the third official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro. 

Blank Check podcast co-host and The Atlantic movie critic David Sims is our book club guest.

On today?s show, Elliott Kalan, Roman Mars, and David Sims will cover the first section of Part 4 of the book (Chapters 11 through the end of Chapter 15), discussing the major story beats and themes.

The Power Broker #3: David Sims

Join the discussion on Discord and our Subreddit.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of a lot of landmarks in pop culture, especially sci-fi and fantasy. So many franchises were born in 1984. Some came to define the genre or invent new genres. The great podcast Imaginary Worlds noticed this and produced a three-part series about 1984's Cambrian explosion of creativity that  landed on the big screen, the small screen, bookstore shelves and, of course, the toy store.

In this episode we learn about at two iconic franchises that launched in 1984: Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They came from opposite ends of the business spectrum. Transformers was a top-down marketing synergy between American and Japanese toy companies along with Marvel Comics to compete against He-Man -- another TV toy behemoth. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle would eventually rival them in cultural dominance, but it began with two indie comic book creators making a black and white comic as a lark. But Turtles and Transformers both ended up wrestling with similar questions around what happens when you put the cart before the horse in creating content to sell products.

Toyetic

Intimidating Proposition 65 warnings can be found on all kinds of products manufactured or distributed in the State of California. They can seem rather terrifying at first, but within the state, they are ubiquitous, on everyday objects from power tools to potato chips, dietary supplements, leather jackets, gas pumps, coffee tables, the list goes on. All of which raises the question: if these labels are on so many things, are they actually useful in warning us of real dangers?

572- WARNING: This Podcast Contains Chemicals Known to the State of California to Cause Cancer or Other Reproductive Harm

Roman Mars is on a mission to describe the cities that shaped who he is and how he thinks about design. Next up, Santa Fe. 

Santa Fe wasn?t always on the proverbial map ? in fact, the Santa Fe railroad just passed it on by. A lot of care has been taken to keep Santa Fe cute and quaint over its history, with steps to preserve native architecture and historical design. The result is a mixture of structures old and new, but mostly made to look old, for better or worse.

Roman Mars Describes Santa Fe As It Is

Note: This series is made possible by the all-new 2024 Lexus GX and SiriusXM. 

Since the mid-1970s, almost every jazz musician has owned a copy of the same book. It has a peach-colored cover, a chunky, 1970s-style logo, and a black plastic binding. It?s delightfully homemade-looking?like it was printed by a bunch of teenagers at a Kinkos. And inside is the sheet music for hundreds of common jazz tunes?also known as jazz ?standards??all meticulously notated by hand. It?s called the Real Book. But if you were going to music school in the 1970s, you couldn?t just buy a copy of the Real Book at the campus bookstore. Because the Real Book... was illegal. The world?s most popular collection of Jazz music was a totally unlicensed publication. The full story of how the Real Book came to be this bootleg bible of jazz is a complicated one. It?s a story about what happens when an insurgent, improvisational art form like Jazz gets codified and becomes something that you can learn from a book.

The Real Book

This episode originally aired in April 2021

Roman note: I love this episode. An all time favorite. Pass it along to someone jazzy if so inclined.

It?s been said that history is written by the person at the typewriter. But who did the person who made history depend on? Often, it?s impossible to find out. But once in a while, we get lucky, and the story was not only recorded, it?s really good.
Well that?s what this podcast is all about. ?Significant Others? is a show that tells a story you might not know about a person you probably do.

For example, in this episode we explore how Benedict Arnold might never have turned on his country were it not for his wife, Peggy, who influenced his betrayal.

Head over to Significant Others to listen to the rest of the episode and to other stories like how Amelia Earhart would neither have found fame nor, possibly, disappeared over the Pacific, had it not been for her husband, George Putnam, or who is really to blame for Friedrich Nietzsche?s connection to Nazism. Listen and subscribe to ?Significant Others? wherever you get your podcasts.

What we see on screen has this way of influencing our perception of the world, which makes sense because the average American spends 2 hours and 51 minutes watching movies and TV each day. That?s a whopping 19 percent of our waking hours. Walt Hickey is a data journalist and author of a new book called You Are What You Watch. In it, Walt makes a case for how much film and television shapes us as individuals and as a society, far beyond what we give it credit for.

You Are What You Watch

This is the second official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro. 

New York Times political columnist Jamelle Bouie is our book club guest.

On today?s show, Elliott Kalan and Roman Mars will cover Part 3 of the book (Chapters 6 through the end of Chapter 10), discussing the major story beats and themes, with occasional asides from Jamelle Bouie guiding us through the politics of the era.

The Power Broker #02: Jamelle Bouie

Join the discussion on Discord and our Subreddit.

White Castle has its own take on fast food hamburgers. For starters, the patties are square, with five holes in each patty. And they?re small, too ?- two-and-a-half inch sliders. Just big enough to fit into the palm of your hand. And since they?re steamed on a bed of onions, everything is infused with this very specific onion-esque flavor.

Today, White Castles can be hard to find, depending on where you live. But KCUR's Mackenzie Martin, a producer at A People's History of Kansas City, says that it?s time to stop thinking of White Castle as a semi-obscure cultural punchline, because over a century ago, White Castle invented something that became so important and all-encompassing that, today, it touches pretty much every person in America. Sometimes several times a day. Something that, in other countries, has almost come to define American culture: it has a strong claim to being the first fast-food restaurant.

The White Castle System of Eating Houses

Seen from above, Sofia, Bulgaria, looks less like a city and more like a forest. Large "interblock park" green spaces between big apartment structures are a defining characteristic of the city. They're not so much "parks" in the formal sense, with fences and gates, just open green areas growing up in interstitial spaces left behind.

But as green as it still looks today, Sofia used to be even greener.  Since the fall of Bulgarian communism in the late 1980s, Sofia has lost more than half of its green space. To understand why, one has to look back to how the city evolved and grew in the Soviet era.

Between the Blocks

When a highway gets made, there?s a clear and consistent process for doing so. Not so, public memorials. From the Vietnam Wall to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, it?s always different. Sometimes a handful of concerned citizens get together and make it happen. Sometimes a nonprofit pushes for it, or a foundation. There?s usually a lot of activism, and a lot of fraught conversations ? about design, location, the story it should tell about what happened, and who it affected. 

And how does one memorialize such a vast and distributed tragedy like COVID-19,  which was devastating physically but also divisive politically?

Don't Forget to Remember

A few years ago, at the very start of the pandemic, Roman Mars wrote an episode of 99pi in which he simply talked about design details in his house -- realizing that he, like the audience, didn't have many other places to go.  (You should check it out. It's called "Roman Mars Describes Things As They Are"-- it?s a real time capsule and a fan favorite.) Since then, he's been thinking about and wanting to record a companion episode out in the world.

Over the next couple months, he's going to three cities that shaped who Roman is and how he thinks about design. We'll start in Chicago. 

Chicago is a design lover's paradise, from its carefully thought-out original grid to its exceptionally stellar flag design. The city is home to some of the most influential architecture in the US as well.

Roman Mars Describes Chicago As It Is

Note: This series is made possible by the all-new 2024 Lexus GX and SiriusXM. 

Watch a skate video today, and you'll notice how similarly shaped the boards are. It?s called the ?popsicle? design, because the deck is narrow in the middle and rounded off at both ends, like a popsicle stick. This may seem stupid simple, but that basic, clean popsicle shape is actually the product of a lot of experimentation and iteration. In 1989, one particular board would cement skateboard design as we know it. But to understand it, we have to go back over a decade to the mid-70s, as more and more money poured into the growing sport.

The Double Kick

Welcome to our first official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro. Robert Caro happens to be our special guest for this episode and you do not get more special than that.

On today?s show, Elliott Kalan and Roman Mars will cover the Introduction, Part 1, and Part 2 of the book (the intro through the end of Chapter 5), discussing the major story beats and themes, and then we will bring the great Robert Caro to the stage. 

Power Broker #01: Robert Caro

Join the discussion on Discord and our Subreddit.

Fake cities. Imitation nations. People role-playing as civilians, spies, or enemies, complete with costumes and props. It's all part of an effort coordinated and constructed by the U.S. military to prepare soldiers for war. Fake villages designed for training purposes dot the entire United States, not to mention other countries. Researchers have identified over 400 of them around the world.

Imitation Nation

Our second and final set of mini-stories for the season: We'll be covering upside-down construction, the linguistics of filler and a fire that has been burning for decades.

Check out Lizzie No's latest album Halfsies on Band Camp.  She's on tour in 2024. Go see her and say hi for me!

Mini-Stories 18

We're revisiting this Christmas classic from 2021. Happy Holidays!

Slovenia is a small country in Central Europe nestled between Italy, Austria, Croatia and Hungary. It's a land of snowy white peaks, green valleys, and turquoise rivers. The country is beautiful in all seasons, but it is perhaps at its most magical around Christmastime. This nation of just over 2 million people is visited by, not one, not two, but three different "santas" every festive season. But it hasn't always been this way. Each Santa has had his moment in the spotlight?each in a different period of Slovenia?s complicated history. And in order to have a Christmas season that reflects that history and speaks to all Slovenians, you need three magical men.

The Three Santas of Slovenia

It's the most wonderful time of the year. It's mini-stories season! Gather the kids around the fire because We have a year-end mix of short stories about a rogue architect, spooky kitchens, a hundred year old music streaming service, and the crazy way the French tried to make telling time less crazy.

Today's episode featured a story from Sound Detectives. Listen to Sound Detectives on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and go to sounddetectivespodcast.com to find coloring pages, sound terms, and more.

Mini-Stories: Volume 17

Keeping track of numbers has always been part of what makes us human. So at some point along the way, we created a tool to help us keep count, and then we gave that tool a name. We called it: a calculator. But depending on what era you were born in, and maybe even what country, what constituted a 'calculator' varied widely.

Keith Houston wrote about the evolution of the calculator in his latest book, Empire of the Sum The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator. It is exactly the kind of nerdery we like to get up to here at 99% Invisible -- history explained through the lens of an everyday designed object.

Empire of the Sum

Today's episode features #1 Robert Caro superfan, Conan O'Brien.

The Power Broker by Robert Caro is a biography of Robert Moses, who is said to have built more structures and moved more earth than anyone in human history. And he did it without ever holding elected office. Outside of New York City, Robert Moses wasn't exceptionally well known. Inside of New York, he was mostly accepted by the media as simply the man who built all those nice parks. But The Power Broker, which is subtitled Robert Moses and The Fall of New York, changed all that. It is a tour de force of journalism, history, and biography. Roman also argues it's really fun to read and is strongly in contention for the best book ever written.

But there is something of a catch, which can hang readers up: the book is a daunting 1200 pages long. As influential and amazing as this bestseller is, many people own an unopened copy gathering dust on their bookshelf. But that is a crime because this book needs to be read or at least discussed at length on a podcast.

Roman Mars and Elliott Kalan (Flop House, Daily Show) are starting The Power Broker book club that will run through all of 2024 as bonus episodes and in this introductory episode, Conan O'Brien joins us to talk all things Robert Caro.

Breaking Down The Power Broker

Roman note: This is one of my favorite episodes of all time. Should be a movie. Enjoy!

The tradition of the Tomb of the Unknowns goes back only about a century, but it has become one of the most solemn and reverential monuments. When President Reagan added the remains of an unknown serviceman who died in combat in Vietnam to the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery in 1984, it was the only set of remains that couldn?t be identified from the war. Now, thankfully, there will never likely be a soldier who dies in battle whose body can?t be identified. And as a result of DNA technology, even the unknowns currently interred in the tomb can be positively identified.

The Known Unknown

The Cassette tape was great in so many ways, but let?s be honest, they never really sounded great.  But because the cassette was so much cheaper and easier to use and portable, a lot of people didn't care so much about the audio quality. They just wanted to be able to use something that they could carry around with them. The cassette?s other big advantage: it was easy to record on.

We talked to Marc Masters about his new book High Bias, about the history of the cassette. One chapter about concert bootleggers covers perhaps the greatest success story of the cassette: Grateful Dead live tapes.

Long Strange Tape

Plus we're featuring a bonus story that we produced in 2016 in collaboration with Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything about a place where cassettes were of vital importance.

In a lot of ways, Lincoln Heights, Ohio, sounds just like any other suburb. If you walk around town, you?ll hear kids playing outside the local elementary school. You?ll hear the highway that takes commuters down to Cincinnati. At the woods on the edge of town, the birdsong is delightful. The town feels calm and peaceful - at least, until the gunfire starts. Most weekdays, it begins in the morning, and lasts through the afternoon. Sometimes it goes past sundown, and occasionally into the weekends. Once the shooting begins, it comes in rapid-fire waves throughout the day. People say it makes it hard to focus or relax, and those who work the night shift say they can?t sleep.

The noise of gunfire isn?t from street violence. It all comes from an open-air gun range that?s owned by the Cincinnati Police Department.

Home on the Range

In the mid-1900s, people flocked to Reno, Nevada -- not for frontier gold or loose slots, but to get out of bad marriages.  The city became known as the "Divorce Capital of the World." For much of modern history, it has been relatively easy to get married, and extremely difficult to get divorced -- and for a time, this was true in the New World as well. But Reno provided the cure: The Six-Week Cure.

Most heists target gold, jewels or cash. This one targeted illegal seeds. As the British established their sprawling empire across the subcontinent and beyond, they encountered a formidable adversary ? malaria. There was a cure ? the bark of the Andean cinchona tree. The only problem? The Dutch and the French were also looking to corner the market in cinchona. And the trees themselves were under threat.

This week on 99pi, we feature a story from Stuff the British Stole, a co-production of ABC Australia and CBC Podcasts. So "grab a gin and tonic and come with us to hear how a botanical empire took off ? and gave birth to a quintessential cocktail."