0:00

This

0:01

is ninety nine percent invisible. I'm

0:03

Roman Mars.

0:06

The whole premise, the whole conceit of

0:08

this show, is that if you look at the world

0:10

in the right way, you'll see stories everywhere.

0:13

Some of these stories are epic power

0:15

struggles chronicling the construction of a world

0:17

famous skyscraper or the founding of a

0:19

city, but other stories are

0:21

more modest, smaller in scope

0:24

and scale. We call those. Minnie

0:27

Stories. Minnie

0:28

Stories are an end of the year tradition where nine

0:30

MPI producers and friends of the show join

0:32

me on Mike to tell me about something cool.

0:35

all I want. I wanna hear something cool, something

0:37

fun, something that you could tell your friends

0:39

or family during a holiday get together.

0:42

Speaking of family, I have

0:44

someone here with me. Please,

0:46

tell these nice people who you are.

0:47

I'm Mars. I'm your big sister.

0:49

Listen, what do you do besides that?

0:52

when

0:52

I'm not big sistering you, I

0:54

write books or I've written a book --

0:56

Yeah. -- about silence.

1:00

The book is called Golden, the power

1:02

of silence in a world of noise.

1:04

And so it is about silence, about why

1:07

it's important, about what it is. and

1:09

how to find it in any situation? So

1:11

what's

1:11

an example finding silence in any situation?

1:14

So

1:14

this is not a book for people running

1:16

off to retreat. and silent retreats,

1:18

for example, for months

1:20

on end. This is really about finding silence

1:22

in the midst of a noise soaked

1:25

busy, full life. Mhmm.

1:28

Something you might know something about, something

1:30

I know something about, something my co author, Justin,

1:32

certainly know something about. And

1:34

what kind of noise are we talking

1:35

about? So the noise we look at in the world

1:37

is auditory, that which happens in our

1:40

informational, that, which comes

1:42

at us usually through our screens -- Mhmm.

1:44

-- and internal, that, which happens inside

1:47

internal chatterremination. worry

1:50

about the future, fretting about the past.

1:52

So

1:52

I was reading your book. I'm getting lot out of it, especially

1:54

the sections about silencing your inner

1:56

chatter because my inner chatter is very

1:59

loud. And

1:59

I but came across as example, that

2:02

is a perfect little

2:04

design related 99PI mini story.

2:06

And it's about the loudness of emergency

2:09

sirens. Can you tell us about that?

2:11

So

2:11

we use emergency vehicles as proxy

2:13

indicator for how loud the

2:15

surrounding environment is because it has to

2:17

pierce through. the surrounding

2:19

MiniStories to get our attention. Right?

2:23

So the composer and environmentalist,

2:25

our Marie Schaeffer, found that

2:27

fire engine sirens in nineteen twelve

2:30

reached about ninety six decibels

2:31

when measured eleven feet away.

2:35

And

2:35

then in nineteen seventy four, it

2:37

reached a hundred and fourteen

2:40

decibels at eleven feet away that same

2:42

distance. Bianca

2:44

Bosker a journalist recently

2:46

looked at the sounds of sirens modern

2:48

day sirens and found that they reached

2:50

up to a hundred and twenty three decibels.

2:53

at about that same distance.

2:59

That might not sound like a big increase, ninety

3:01

six to one fourteen to one twenty three, but on a

3:03

logarithmic scale. So that means

3:05

that it's an exponential increase every

3:07

ten decibels is ten times

3:09

the sound pressure to the Mars. and

3:12

twice as

3:12

loud in our experience of

3:14

of hearing it. So from nineteen

3:17

twelve to twenty nineteen, the

3:20

siren levels have increased

3:23

six fold. They're six times louder.

3:25

So

3:25

that shows you how loud it's become.

3:28

in that surrounding environment that our

3:30

sirens have to be six times

3:32

as loud to get our attention. That's

3:34

so cool. Okay. So tell everyone again

3:36

the name of the book. is called Golden,

3:38

the

3:38

power of silence, and a world of noise

3:41

written by your big sister. Mars,

3:44

and Justin Zorn, my other

3:47

brother. What?

3:48

Get out.

3:52

And

3:53

with that, the twenty twenty two, twenty twenty

3:55

three mini stories are underway. You'll

3:57

hear about a very very long

3:59

escalator

3:59

beavers dropping from the sky.

4:02

We'll hear from Janet, miss Jackson,

4:04

if you're nasty, and a visit from

4:06

the queen. Let's go.

4:14

So

4:14

I'm here with producer, Chris Berbigris. Robin,

4:17

it is the most wonderful time

4:19

of the year. It is fantastic. So what do you

4:21

got for me? So my mini story is about

4:23

Queen Elizabeth. who died this year

4:25

back in September. And of course, being

4:27

Canadian, it's something I heard about a

4:29

lot. It was something everybody was

4:31

talking about for a solid month. Right.

4:33

Right. Because I don't know

4:35

if I really fully understand the relationship

4:38

between the queen and Canadians, but so what

4:40

is she to you exactly? Yeah.

4:41

She was Canada's head of state --

4:44

Okay. -- which is a little esoteric

4:46

to be honest. I mean, she's on the money.

4:48

She wasn't really that present

4:50

in day to day life. I mean, it it used

4:52

to be different. It used to be, you know, you look at

4:54

pictures of old hockey games. And

4:56

during the National Anthem, all the players

4:58

are you know, looking up at a painting

5:00

of the queen during the national anthem.

5:02

But mostly for Canadians,

5:04

you know, especially in the twenty first

5:06

century, The only times we really thought

5:08

about her were during royal visits,

5:10

like when she would come to

5:12

visit Canada. And

5:14

that's actually what I wanna talk about today is one

5:16

of those. Oh, fantastic. Okay. Hit me.

5:19

Okay. So back in two thousand two, the

5:21

Queen came by My Old Workplace,

5:23

The CBC. And this is before

5:25

I worked there, I did not get to meet the

5:27

queen, but I've spoken to a couple of

5:29

people who were involved and they

5:31

all tell me it was pretty intense

5:33

like they were preparing for this thing for

5:35

months in advance. She only

5:37

has, like, it might

5:40

be

5:40

twelve minutes or eight to twelve minutes.

5:43

But there's been a year of

5:45

preparation of we need a

5:47

bathroom built on the on that floor

5:49

in case Queen has to fart

5:51

or whatever. Okay. So

5:53

this is Luciano Casamiri. He's a

5:55

comedy writer. And back in

5:57

two thousand two, he was working at

5:59

the CBC. And all this

6:01

prep is going on and his

6:03

boss comes up to him and says, hey,

6:05

we need a writer to work on the event. Mhmm.

6:08

And Luchiano was like, well, that's

6:10

confusing. Like, why would you need a comedy

6:12

writer? I don't plan events. Right. And his

6:14

boss says, well, we need somebody

6:16

to write all the dialogue. All

6:18

the Right. All the dialogue for like a real

6:20

life. visit. What does that mean? Right.

6:22

So the boss tells him, okay.

6:24

Everything that is going to be said to the

6:26

queen during this visit It must

6:28

be written out in advance, and

6:31

we are going to send all the dialogue

6:33

to Buckingham Palace. for, like,

6:35

approval. Oh my

6:37

goodness. I know. So okay. His job

6:39

was to write dialogue for

6:41

thirty people who worked at the CBC. These

6:43

are regular people that they were

6:45

going to say to the queen of England.

6:47

So what kind of dialogue is he

6:49

writing? Yeah. Luciano explained a

6:51

typical back and forth to me and the

6:53

way he described it like it sounded pretty boilerplate?

6:56

This is Chris. He's writer.

6:59

He's a a podcaster, and

7:01

he's been with us for seventeen years.

7:03

And there's, you know, Chris has been nice to meet

7:06

you. What exactly is a podcast?

7:08

And then, you know, you would go off script.

7:10

It's like, radio and

7:13

it's, you know, all us

7:15

nerds do it. It's crazy. You should do

7:17

it. Well, he's got us pegged. Yeah.

7:19

A hundred percent. So for, like, a month,

7:21

Luciano's writing this dialogue for thirty

7:24

people and he's sending it to Buckingham Palace

7:26

and they're coming back with these notes.

7:28

You can't hug her. You can't get a

7:30

selfie with her unless

7:32

she asks for one. One

7:34

of the protocols

7:36

that

7:37

still blows away, they tell you, oh,

7:40

don't ask if the jewels are real

7:43

because they're real. That

7:45

is hilarious. Okay. So

7:47

this just brings to mind a

7:49

ton of questions. Like, is this

7:51

how it is all the time? Yeah.

7:53

Me too. So many questions. First question,

7:56

obviously, is everybody who

7:58

meets her reading off a script. Right? How much does she

8:00

know about this? Is the Queen Living

8:02

inside the Truman Show? Like, do you remember the

8:04

movie the Truman Show? I did. I saw

8:06

it originally when it came out. Good

8:08

morning.

8:08

Good morning.

8:09

Come on. Oh, and in case I don't

8:12

see you, good afternoon, good evening, and

8:14

good night.

8:14

Yeah. Yeah.

8:17

Sort of Truman, morning adventure. Jim

8:19

Carey is inside of a TV show, but but in

8:21

that case, he doesn't everyone else knows it,

8:23

but he doesn't know it. Like, she could be

8:25

the Truman of the Truman Show

8:27

or if she could be in on it. I don't know.

8:29

Yeah. Exactly. So I asked Luciano

8:33

and he doesn't know. Right? He only knows that

8:35

this one time he had to write

8:37

dialogue for the Queen. So

8:39

when I heard that the Queen died, you know, I first heard the

8:41

story about ten years ago -- Mhmm. -- and

8:43

I decided You know what? I gotta get to the

8:45

bottom. Okay. Like, how common

8:47

was this for the queen? Excellent. So

8:49

what did you do? Well, first off, I

8:51

actually called Buckingham Palace.

8:53

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know you could actually just

8:55

call it, but yeah. That that part of

8:57

it. Yeah. They actually have this public phone

8:59

number for journalist. So if you have a press inquiry,

9:01

you can just call and ask

9:03

Bucking Caballis a question. And

9:06

the rules are you can't record, so I was

9:08

not allowed to record that. So

9:10

I called them up and I'm like, hey, you know, weird question.

9:12

Did the Queen live inside the Truman

9:14

Show? And they're like, we'll get back to

9:16

you on that, and they obviously haven't gotten

9:18

back to me on that. So my

9:21

next step is I decided I was going to

9:23

email people who had met the queen on

9:25

royal visits. So people who were

9:27

in photos with the queen So I emailed

9:29

a bunch. And within an hour, I actually heard

9:31

back from somebody, and I'm kinda

9:33

surprised he got back to me.

9:35

Hello, John Manley speaking. Oh, hello.

9:37

This is Chris Berube,

9:39

miss your honor, the honorable John

9:41

Bandley. I'm sorry. What do I actually call you?

9:43

No. Whatever you want. It doesn't matter.

9:46

Okay. So the honorable John Manley

9:48

was the deputy prime minister of Canada

9:50

from two thousand two to two thousand three,

9:53

and During the royal visit in two thousand

9:55

two, he was the Queen's escort

9:57

when she visited Parliament Hill, which sounds very

9:59

official.

9:59

But according to him, the whole experience

10:02

was It little uninspiring. I

10:04

met her at the aircraft. I

10:06

was in the motorcade but

10:09

there's not a lot to do. There's not a lot

10:11

of opportunity to

10:13

talk with her, to be

10:16

with her. I mean, you don't travel

10:18

with the queen. She's in her own

10:21

vehicle. So

10:23

John Manley says, much like Luciano,

10:25

he was given this long list of things

10:27

you're not supposed to do when you meet the queen,

10:29

like you're supposed to bow, you're supposed to call

10:31

her, your majesty, stuff like that.

10:33

So I'm building up to it and obviously It's

10:36

weird to ask someone were you reading

10:38

off a script. Okay. But

10:40

I built up the courage. I asked him. I

10:42

told him the whole story about Luciano. and

10:44

John Manley said, no.

10:46

He did not have to read off a

10:48

script when he met the queen.

10:49

Well, I I never experienced a palace

10:52

being that you

10:53

involved in the details -- Oh,

10:55

okay. -- moment by moment. Does

10:57

that sound

10:57

plausible to you that, like, everybody

11:00

speaking to the queen is reading off a script of

11:02

some kind? Well,

11:02

it's -- my

11:05

guess is that wasn't dictated

11:07

by the Palace. It was probably dictated

11:09

by the CBC. Yeah.

11:12

Jonathan, we the Queen's coming to

11:14

our building. Here's what here's

11:16

how we're going to receive her.

11:19

Now they may have, you know,

11:21

somebody may have decided they should tell the

11:23

Palace what they plan to do. So

11:25

my guess is that was the CBC's

11:27

plan. So do

11:28

you have any, you know, theories as to

11:30

why the CBC would do that? So

11:32

I asked

11:32

a few people about this and it seems like

11:34

the big reason was timing. Like,

11:36

they had less than fifteen minutes. They

11:39

wanted to get to thirty people. It's just a

11:41

lot more efficient if you script everything

11:43

out. but also, like, the CBC

11:45

is a public institution. I can

11:47

see them being worried that if somebody

11:49

goes off the cuff they offends the

11:51

queen, that could be a terrible headline.

11:53

You know, there's lots of reasons this might have

11:55

happened. But regardless, whatever

11:57

the reason was that day, everybody

12:00

was scripted. And so, like, how did

12:02

it go with the CBC? Like, did people

12:04

actually stick to the script? Yeah. So

12:06

Luciano told me, you know, after all the prep, writing the

12:08

dialogue for thirty people, they actually did a

12:10

run through where Luciano played the

12:12

queen and went up and was like, hello, I'm

12:14

the queen. And the whole

12:16

visit, after all that, it went

12:18

totally fine. It was twelve minutes

12:20

long. Luciano actually was able

12:22

to sneak himself into the line to

12:24

meet the queen. and she had,

12:26

like, a emerald necklace

12:28

and tiara. And all I could

12:30

think of was, like, holy is that real?

12:32

Like, Like, I guess that's

12:34

why they have the rule because you're so gobsmacked by the

12:36

jewels like everyone just, you know,

12:38

mouth the gate says for those real. yeah,

12:40

exactly. I mean, Roman, that's why I never ask you

12:42

about your recording tiara. I I feel like it

12:44

depends on the recording question. Well,

12:46

and you should always assume it's real.

12:49

This is so great. Well, thank

12:51

you, Chris. Thanks, Roman.

13:06

This

13:08

is the sound of the longest escalator

13:10

in the United States. It's at Wheaton

13:12

station, which is a stop on Washington

13:14

DC's metro subway system, The

13:16

escalator is two hundred and thirty feet

13:19

long, and it takes about three minutes

13:21

to travel from top to bottom.

13:23

Ninety nine PIs intern, Olivia Green,

13:25

lives in DC, and she's gonna tell

13:27

you about this escalator and some

13:29

of the war surrounding the metro station

13:31

that's part of. in the length of time it

13:33

takes for her to ride the escalator.

13:36

So here's Olivia.

13:39

I'm

13:40

a regular metro computer, but

13:42

standing here is always kind of

13:44

an eerie experience. In

13:46

addition to the sounds of the machines and just

13:49

how deep the tunnel goes. If you

13:51

look up, the walls are curved,

13:53

gray, and stark looking.

13:55

Engineers chose to build this

13:57

particular state so deep because the rock

13:59

in this

13:59

area is especially

14:00

soft. So they

14:01

needed to dig the train tunnels and more

14:04

solid rock further down. The

14:06

tunnel's visual inspiration came from a team

14:08

of architects led by a man named

14:10

Harry Weiss back in the nineteen

14:12

sixties. So prior

14:14

to taking on metro, we

14:16

said not worked on a subway system

14:18

before. This

14:19

is Zachary Stragg. MiniStories

14:21

who studied the

14:22

Washington metro system. And

14:25

so as part of this contract, he managed to

14:27

get a first class round the

14:29

world trip spending a lot of time in Western

14:31

Europe, but also Union,

14:33

I believe, in Japan, looking at

14:36

subway systems and sketching them

14:38

rapidly and trying to think about

14:40

what arts of them could be adapted to

14:42

Washington.

14:43

Weese was inspired by those train

14:45

systems from around the world and he

14:47

ended up designing these vaulted

14:49

underground stations with coffered

14:51

ceilings that look kind of like a waffle.

14:54

The stations are lit with hidden lights

14:56

that cast dramatic shadows.

14:58

Harry, we slightly

15:00

get tremendous credit

15:02

for the overall appearance

15:04

of Metro. It's unforgettable appearance,

15:07

really.

15:08

But it's important to understand

15:10

that he was the leader of a team and

15:13

a very fruitful member of that

15:15

team was a lighting designer named

15:17

William Lam. Lam was

15:18

responsible for the lights that shine

15:20

upwards and illuminate the vault turning

15:22

it into a kind of underground

15:25

sky. I

15:25

think what Weiss was trying to do was to

15:28

make the stations seem

15:30

like a little bit of the outdoors

15:32

underground. So the vault is a bit

15:34

like the sky. The granite edges on

15:36

the platforms might resemble the

15:38

curves of a sidewalk.

15:40

But as I ride the escalator, I

15:43

can't help but feel like the

15:45

overall effect of this design isn't

15:47

always reassuring. It's kind of

15:49

spooky, and I don't think I'm the only

15:51

one who feels this way. In

15:53

fact, the DC metro system

15:55

has inspired quite a bit of extra

15:57

terrestrial lore. You can

15:59

see hints of it in

15:59

stations across the city, like

16:02

small tags of flying saucers on the

16:04

outsides of stations. and

16:06

lots of stories, mostly shared on

16:08

Reddit, of encounters with ghost

16:10

trains passing by filled with

16:11

alien creatures. And

16:13

while it's mostly playful, there

16:15

is something about the metro's design

16:17

that lends itself to being an imaginative

16:19

space for its passengers.

16:21

Zachary Stragg hasn't personally seen

16:24

any aliens on the metro, but he

16:26

still kind of gets it. And so

16:27

when a train comes in, it casts a

16:29

shadow up on the vault.

16:31

So there's this, you know, dark shadow coming

16:33

in and then slowing down and then speeding

16:35

up again as it disappears. And

16:38

here

16:38

we are. at the end of the longest

16:40

escalator in one of the country's most

16:42

iconic metro

16:43

stations. Thanks,

16:45

Olivia. This is great.

16:54

A few

16:54

months back, a story went around the Internet about

16:57

a bizarre computer issue from the mid two

16:59

thousands. It was from a blog post

17:01

by Microsoft developer, Raymond

17:03

Chen. So

17:04

a laptop manufacturer came to the Windows team and

17:06

reported a serious problem. It

17:08

turns out

17:08

when they played a song by one

17:11

specific artist And in fact, it specific

17:14

song. The laptop crashed.

17:16

But things got

17:16

even weirder when they started testing

17:19

it out. found

17:20

that this song crashed some of

17:22

their competitors laptops also. But

17:24

the weirdest thing was that if you

17:26

played this song, It not only crashed

17:28

the laptop that was playing it, it

17:31

also crashed a laptop that was sitting next

17:33

to it that wasn't playing the song at

17:35

all. No. Before

17:35

I play this song, if you have a laptop that's

17:37

over fifteen years old, you might wanna cover

17:40

its ears.

17:52

This is Janet Jackson's nineteen eighty

17:55

nine smash hit rhythm nation.

17:57

Now, I found the story fascinating and

17:59

bizarre, but even

17:59

after reading the blog post, I still didn't

18:02

really understand what was going on, so I asked our

18:04

engineer Gonzalez to come explain.

18:06

Everyone, what's up? Hey. So

18:08

what do you have for me? Okay.

18:10

Well, disclaimer

18:11

upfront. I'm a music school dropout,

18:13

not a computer scientist. Sure.

18:15

Sure. I wouldn't have it any other way. So

18:19

here's my best understanding of what

18:21

happened. These engineers were

18:23

trying to figure out how this particular

18:25

song was crashing all these different computers.

18:28

And they narrowed it down to the

18:30

hard drive, so all the laptop to the

18:32

same model of hard drive. Okay.

18:34

So computer shortages come a long way

18:36

since then, and solid state drives are in a

18:38

lot of laptops now. But the

18:40

basic concept of a hard drive has been around since the sixties.

18:43

There's a spinning platter with the data and

18:45

an arm over it that reads and writes

18:47

the data. So think of like a

18:49

really tiny little record player inside

18:51

of a box. Yes. I mean, I remember that you

18:53

could actually hear the spinning of the drive.

18:55

It would spin fast when you up

18:57

or click on a file. It was a mechanical

18:59

thing you felt. Yeah. Like, my

19:01

two thousand five era PowerBook

19:03

would sound kinda like

19:05

this. Yep. Totally.

19:09

And

19:09

so without getting two into the weeds

19:11

of the physics, spinning fast

19:14

enough to actually hit a musical

19:16

note. Okay. And the pitch it makes

19:18

depends on the speed of the

19:20

hard drive. So the hard drive has all these resonant

19:22

frequencies that are actually musical notes. And

19:24

if you played one loud enough, you could

19:26

actually knock the hard drive physically out

19:28

of whack. You know, like, the trope

19:30

of, like, an opera singer, shattering

19:32

glass with a high note. Same idea.

19:34

Right. Okay. Got it. Yeah. So

19:36

when the laptop manufacturer sure trying

19:38

to pinpoint the problem. They figured out

19:40

that Rhythm Nation had a frequency in it that

19:42

was breaking these hard drives that way. And

19:44

they even narrowed it down to one particular

19:46

cellular model of hard drive that was used in a

19:48

bunch of different companies' laptops. But

19:50

like, why just this

19:52

one song? because I can't imagine it's

19:55

so I mean, I love Janet Jackson,

19:57

but it's so musically innovative

19:59

that it creates a sound that no

20:02

other songs have ever created. You know

20:04

what I'm saying? Yeah.

20:06

So there's two big reasons

20:09

why only Janet Jackson's song has this

20:11

frequency. Okay. The first

20:13

one is the song is

20:15

sped up very slightly to make it a little more

20:17

exciting. This is a really common trick.

20:19

So here's the speed the song was actually

20:21

recorded at.

20:29

And

20:31

here's the slightly faster final

20:34

version.

20:38

I didn't know

20:41

that

20:41

at all. That's

20:43

amazing. It does work. I like

20:45

the first one I was like, oh, this totally this is this one

20:47

I recognize. And I'm like, oh, no. It's the second one

20:49

that I really recognize. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. It makes

20:51

it, like, a little more exciting, a

20:54

little grooveier. So this recorded in the era of tape machines, and

20:56

you can hear that when you speed the tape up,

20:58

it also goes up in pitch. Mhmm.

21:00

So the notes in rhythm nation

21:02

fall between the ones you'd normally hear in

21:04

a pop hit. Oh, oh, okay.

21:06

I see. So that's why the song

21:09

contains frequencies that other

21:11

songs

21:11

might not. have

21:12

ever had. Exactly. And

21:15

when you first asked me about this,

21:17

I naturally went, well, what is

21:19

that frequency? I was doing a little

21:21

research and this YouTuber Adam

21:23

Neely explained the speed change

21:25

and he theorized that

21:27

it moved the base notes

21:29

into the frequency range that would just vibrate

21:31

this platter out of control. Right. Right.

21:33

And this makes sense to me because,

21:36

you know, if you're at a show or

21:38

you're just, like, walking down a

21:40

neighborhood and a car is playing loud music,

21:42

it is the base that you feel like in

21:44

your startup. Like, that's what's really

21:46

rattling you. Right. Right. But here's why I think

21:48

it might not actually be the

21:50

base. Like remember when there was that

21:52

coronavirus and people were

21:54

like, Maybe Roman's voice is so

21:56

busy. It's breaking mysterious.

21:58

Like, the amount of bass you would need to

22:00

break a laptop sitting next to

22:02

it would be way beyond the capability of, like, a

22:05

two thousand five era

22:07

laptop. Like, you need some Jamaica

22:09

subwoofer series. Yeah.

22:12

And you know, moves around a lot.

22:14

It doesn't hang out on any one

22:16

sustained frequency for very long.

22:18

Yeah. So I looked up this

22:20

study of laptop hard drive

22:22

resonant frequencies and saw

22:24

that there's a couple around two thousand

22:27

hertz. which is the

22:29

same windy high pitch

22:31

that the hard drive I played earlier was

22:33

making. So that's why I suspect

22:35

it might actually be that frequency that

22:37

was the too. And so does Rhythm

22:39

Nation have that frequency

22:41

buried in there? Yep. It is not

22:43

buried. It is loud

22:45

and clear. It's

22:50

these

22:52

couple of sustained piercings

22:55

synthesizer nodes.

22:59

Whoa.

23:02

Yeah. And this third

23:04

sustained one is at right

23:06

about two thousand hertz, which

23:08

if that was the resonant frequency of

23:10

that one particular hard drive, it

23:12

happens enough in the song where it could totally knock it out of

23:14

whack. And tiny little

23:17

laptop speakers can really

23:19

blast this frequency clearly. So

23:21

it would be possible if you played it loud

23:23

enough that it could affect a neighboring hard

23:26

drive. Oh, cool. Wow. Yeah. And

23:28

there's this other kind of crazy sound

23:30

in there that might be a factor as

23:32

well.

23:36

I mean, that that itself sounds like a broken

23:38

hard drive. Right. Right. And

23:40

it's a very weird sound. It's like a

23:42

jankly looped high hat kind

23:45

of thing. It's got a lot of energy

23:47

around that same two thousand hertz

23:49

area. So if my theory is right,

23:51

those two sounds together could really cause

23:53

a lot of chaos. So this is an

23:55

amazing string of coincidental. So

23:57

that this song happen to

23:59

have these uncommon pitches. They lined up

24:01

exactly with the frequencies of

24:03

one specific model of hard drive. So I mean,

24:05

it's really something. Yeah. And in the

24:07

blog post, Raymond Chen said there was

24:09

actually a fairly simple solution.

24:11

They programmed in a really sharp EQ

24:13

cut that just targeted the

24:15

problem frequency without affecting any

24:17

of the other ones. And it's way easier to narrowly

24:20

remove individual high

24:22

frequencies than base ones. So here's

24:24

what it sounds like if I

24:26

just took two thousand hertz completely out of the

24:28

song.

24:34

Am I supposed

24:37

to

24:37

be hearing a difference? Because I

24:39

really don't. No. Well,

24:42

that's exactly the point. Like, the only difference is

24:44

that that synthesizer part is almost

24:46

inaudible, but it would be totally impossible

24:48

to notice the difference through these crappy

24:51

laptops. speak well. That's just a great solution. I love it.

24:53

Yeah. And the funny part is Raymond says

24:55

there's also a possibility this code is

24:57

just still lurking out there, cutting out

25:00

frequencies on certain models of laptop

25:02

for hard drives that aren't used

25:04

anymore. That's so funny to me that that there's,

25:06

you know, this code that

25:08

may be still out there in

25:10

hard drives is legacy code that is, you

25:12

know, deprecating your speakers just a

25:14

little bit just to

25:17

guard us. from Janet Jackson.

25:19

Yeah. The people who put it in there

25:21

are all long gone. No one dares touch

25:23

it in case it breaks something.

25:25

just a remnant of a of the

25:27

mid two thousands. Yeah. No. Well, it's

25:29

so funny. Okay. Well, this is perfect. Thank you

25:31

so much for explaining this to me. It is

25:33

such a fun story. Yeah. No

25:35

problem. Bear with

25:39

me.

25:44

After the break,

25:48

operation be over Trump. I

25:50

mean, how could not come back for that?

25:58

So I'm here with Kurt

26:01

Colstad, digital director and co author

26:03

of the ninety nine percent Invisible City. Hey,

26:05

Kurt. Hey, Rowan.

26:06

What is your mini story this

26:08

year? A few years back, an employee

26:10

of Idaho Fishing Game turned up

26:12

this long lost archival video

26:14

filmed in the late nineteen forties

26:17

entitled for for the future. Now, this film had

26:19

been misfiled and mislabeled for over half a

26:21

century and had gained kind

26:23

of legendary quality

26:26

around the office. For reasons, we'll get into it a

26:28

bit. Okay. Keep going. But

26:30

basically, it documents Idaho's practice

26:32

of relocating specific mammal species for

26:34

conservation purposes, including

26:36

Muscratz and Mars and Beavers. And

26:38

the

26:38

film starts off simply enough just

26:40

explaining conventional relocation projects like

26:42

this one. This man

26:44

is carrying zebra live tracks.

26:47

is on his way to a beaver

26:50

pond where he will remove the busy

26:52

engineers who will become too

26:54

numerous. When this happens

26:56

or when activities of the beaver

26:58

cause damage to private lands,

27:01

they are live trapped. and

27:03

moved to distant mountain lakes and

27:05

streams. By the

27:06

nineteen thirties, relocating beavers was

27:08

actually a pretty common practice. and partly this

27:10

was to get them out of the way of encroaching

27:13

humans, but it also had become

27:15

increasingly clear to ecologists that

27:17

papers were hugely important to

27:19

ecosystems. They helped establish and maintain

27:21

wetlands, reduced erosion, created habitats,

27:23

and so on. Okay. So it

27:25

was in part to keep the beavers

27:27

clear of people, but but also in part

27:29

to preserve the population. Right. And

27:31

we're talking about a population in

27:34

serious crisis at this point. So for

27:36

context, when colonists first arrived,

27:38

In America, there were hundreds

27:40

of millions of American beavers. But by the

27:42

turn of the twentieth century, that

27:44

number had dropped to around one hundred

27:47

thousand. And so conservationists naturally

27:49

wanted to seed small populations

27:51

up all over the place to try to

27:53

build those numbers back up.

27:55

Okay.

27:55

So how were these beavers

27:58

relocated? Well,

27:58

often they were just caught, created, and

28:01

taken by trucks, somewhere up the road.

28:03

But in a lot of cases, the best places to

28:05

move beavers were really far out there,

28:07

located in remote stretches of wilderness

28:09

with few, if any, roads

28:11

or trails. And so agencies

28:13

like the Department of Natural Resources

28:15

tried kinds of solutions, including strapping boxes

28:17

of beavers to the backs of horses and

28:20

mules. And these packing rules were then led

28:22

by people, sometimes for

28:24

days, deep into the wilderness with their live cargo. And

28:26

as you might imagine, none of the

28:28

animals involved in this, like

28:31

this. You mean angry

28:33

beavers and crates strapped to horses and

28:35

they no one liked that. Nobody

28:37

liked that. Nobody liked that. But it's

28:39

fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. And and

28:41

it was so bad in fact that that

28:43

some of the beavers that were

28:45

moved around this way didn't actually survive

28:47

the journey. I assume they were just essentially

28:49

scared to death. Oh, that's awful. And, of

28:51

course, the horses are spooked too. It just wasn't

28:53

a good time. Yeah. And so finally,

28:55

in the late nineteen forties, this

28:57

employee of Idaho Fishing Game began

28:59

trying to figure out how to relocate

29:01

beavers more safely, in this

29:03

case to a very remote part of the

29:05

state, which has since come to be

29:07

known as the Frank Church

29:09

River of no return, Wilderness.

29:11

The Frank Church River of

29:13

no return, Wilderness. Okay. That sounds very

29:16

remote. Yes. Yes. Very

29:18

far out there. I think there's a warning in the name.

29:20

I think it's probably best if you don't wonder out

29:22

there slowly. Yeah. No return.

29:24

And it's hard to get beavers out there too.

29:26

Right? And so they had to start thinking

29:28

outside the proverbial box. and

29:30

work on faster and cheaper and ultimately

29:32

safer ways to ship dozens of beavers

29:34

into the middle of nowhere. And in the

29:36

end, they

29:37

came up with this pretty

29:39

wild idea. On the

29:41

shores of Hayatt Lake are crates full

29:43

of beavers, part of a shipment to be dropped

29:45

by parachute from an airplane. Okay.

29:48

Just so I get this straight. They've

29:50

got these boxes full of beavers

29:52

that they're going to drop with

29:54

parachutes into the wilderness.

29:56

How did they settle on this as

29:58

the way to do

29:59

this? Well, it was a

30:02

lot of circumstance involved in the decision.

30:04

Like, for example, this was the post war

30:06

era. And so they were looking around for

30:08

available materials and realized they

30:10

could secure some War two

30:13

parachutes for pretty cheap at this point.

30:15

Right? They're not being used anymore.

30:17

Okay. And so with those in

30:19

hand, they then worked on designing a

30:21

delivery box. open once it landed to

30:23

let out the beavers. And they considered

30:25

some pretty crazy ideas for that too,

30:27

like using a kind of wood that would be

30:29

easy for the beavers to chew so

30:31

that there wouldn't need to be a door. They would just

30:33

let themselves out. But

30:35

they realized there could be a problem

30:37

if they got working on that

30:39

you know, before they were dropped

30:41

from the airplane. Right. That

30:43

war if they were dropped in and

30:45

mid air. Right. Well, either way, it's

30:47

a problem because either they chew their way

30:49

out while the plane is flying and then

30:52

there's beavers wreaking havoc all over your

30:54

airplane or even worse.

30:56

Maybe, I don't even know, is that they

30:58

chew their way while they're floating down.

31:00

And then that would be just a mess. That

31:02

would be tough. Yeah. I

31:04

mean, certainly for the beavers, that would be the worst.

31:06

Yeah. And so they pretty quickly

31:08

abandoned that approach. And what they

31:10

landed on instead was this fairly plain wooden

31:12

box with a rope and hinge

31:14

system that would pop the door open automatically

31:16

on impact. Into the

31:18

drop box. Nearly ready for

31:20

that flight back into the mountain.

31:22

And the box has this array of

31:24

circular air holes. It kinda looks like

31:26

a giant block of Swiss cheese. The

31:28

drop crates are loaded into the airplane.

31:31

Parachutes are attached to cargo

31:33

line. Two to a crate, no is our style

31:35

because the point is to get them to start

31:37

a colony. ten boxes to a load, twenty

31:39

beaver ready for the flight to mountain

31:41

meadows. And then they're off heading

31:43

toward the river of no returns. The

31:45

plane makes a careful approach. ready

31:47

for the drop. Now into the air and down

31:50

the swing, down to the ground,

31:52

near a stream, or are they? And because

31:54

the planes are flying so low, the

31:56

shoots open basically right

31:58

away and then land pretty

31:59

gently at which point. The

32:02

box opens and our most unusual

32:05

and novel trip ends for mister

32:07

Bieber. He's on his way

32:09

now. His nose and his

32:11

instinct tell him where to find the

32:13

water. there's room here for

32:15

a new home.

32:20

This

32:20

is amazing. And So did

32:22

they know this would work? I mean, how much

32:24

testing did they do before they just started

32:26

throwing papers off of planes? They

32:28

they fair amount of testing actually. They their

32:31

primary test candidate was

32:33

this beaver aptly named

32:35

Geronimo. And apparently,

32:37

Geronimo got so used to these flights. He

32:39

started just waiting for the crew to come

32:41

and pick him up after each

32:43

flight. Yeah. And

32:45

thanks, in part to these tests,

32:47

they determined that the optimal altitude forward drop

32:49

was around five hundred to eight hundred feet,

32:52

and this is a bit obvious, but

32:55

ideally in low wind conditions. Well, yeah. Of course,

32:57

you don't wanna drop your fevers in high

32:59

winds. Definitely not. I

33:01

mean, but I'm glad to hear that they put amount

33:03

of thought into this, you know? Yeah.

33:05

No. No. They really did. And and not

33:07

only into the production of these

33:09

crates and the kind of design of this

33:13

experimental relocation process,

33:15

but also into documenting it

33:17

all. Yeah. And so, you

33:19

know, somebody of this program had the

33:21

brilliant idea of filming this,

33:23

everything from the box designs to the field

33:25

tests to the actual deployments in nineteen

33:28

fifty And so this video is really rich,

33:30

resulting in this thing that got lost for a long time,

33:32

but is now out in the world and

33:34

just the world is better for it.

33:36

That's amazing. So in the

33:38

end, how many beavers did they actually

33:40

relocate in this way? In the

33:42

end, the air dropped a total of seventy

33:44

six beavers. And

33:46

thanks to all of that design and testing and

33:48

planning only one beaver perished.

33:50

Seventy five of them made it to the ground

33:52

safe and sound. And so the program was a

33:54

success. These beavers started multiplying and

33:56

spreading out and really redeveloping

33:58

the local ecosystem.

34:00

Wow. But

34:00

on a grander scale, perhaps the more

34:03

lasting legacy of this all

34:05

the other animal airlifts that

34:07

are now normal today. Like suspending

34:09

goats from helicopters to

34:12

relocate them or dumping tons of fish bellies into

34:14

lakes to repopulate them. Well,

34:16

this is cool stuff, and it's fun

34:20

to imagine. a bunch

34:22

of fevers floating gently down

34:24

in boxes, seeding the

34:26

landscape. And you know when I was telling somebody this

34:28

story a couple

34:30

days ago, they told me that they were picturing

34:32

beavers with little parachutes on them.

34:34

And, honestly,

34:37

It's such a brilliant mental image, and I kind of wish that's

34:39

what they've done. Obviously,

34:42

probably would not have worked as well and would have

34:44

caused all kinds

34:46

of problems. but it would not work. It's so cute. Like, beaver

34:48

paratroopers. Like -- Yes. -- just like

34:50

we could imagine them just single file, like, hopping

34:52

out of the plane. Go go go. You know

34:54

what? I love it.

34:57

Yeah. If only. Yep. So if

34:59

only It seems like they landed

35:01

on the right solution, but it

35:03

is fun to imagine and little

35:05

b for characterization.

35:05

It really is. It's just taking over the river of NovaBay. This

35:08

is awesome. Well, thank you so

35:10

much, Kurt. I

35:12

appreciate it. Yeah.

35:14

Thank you.

35:29

Ninety

35:29

nine percent of Visible was produced this week by

35:32

Chris Mars, Martine Gonzalez,

35:34

Kurt Colstad, in our intern, Olivia Green. This

35:36

is our last week with us as an

35:38

intern, she will be missed.

35:40

Music director's sound, Swan

35:42

Riel. The Lany Hall is a senior editor for us

35:44

the team, includes Vivien Lai, Christopher

35:46

Johnson, Emmett Fitzgerald, Los

35:48

Mendon, Jason Dleyone, Jacob

35:50

Moltenado Medina, Kelly Prime, Joe

35:52

Rosenberg, Sophia

35:54

Klutz and me,

35:54

Roman Mars. Special thanks this week to

35:57

Alex Malatko, Jonathan Torrance, Raymond

35:59

Chen, and my sister,

36:02

Lee Morris. her book is called

36:04

Golden. You should buy

36:06

it. We are part

36:08

of

36:08

the Stitcher in SiriusXM

36:10

podcast family. Now headquarter six blocks North

36:12

in the Pandora building. In beautiful, Uptown, Oakland,

36:16

California. You can find the show and joint discussions about

36:18

the show

36:20

on Facebook You can tweet it me Mars and the show at 99PI

36:22

org. We're on Instagram, Reddit,

36:24

and TikTok too. You can find links to

36:26

other Stitcher shows I love, as well

36:28

as every past episode

36:30

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36:34

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36:34

org.