Tootle of a Devilish Song

How a Swiss mountain call crossed the Atlantic and helped define the sound of country music.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Roman Mars?

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• 1:48Roman Mars?

  This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

• 1:56Roman Mars?

  It's a sweltering June morning in Basel, Switzerland. Trams roll through the streets. Some people get their first coffee, while others cool off in the Rhine.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  I'm coming up here to the Münsterplatz. This is the big cathedral in the square.

• 2:13Roman Mars?

  That's reporter and Basel resident Gabe Bullard.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  There's a group here of people in their traditional outfits: the dark pants, white shirts, suspenders with idle vice.

• 2:26Roman Mars?

  But this isn't everyday Basel. Gabe is attending a celebration of Swiss folk music that happens every three years, called Yodelerfest.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  Yodelerfest is what I imagine people outside of Switzerland think the country is like every day. It's like a snow globe idea of Switzerland. People are in their long-sleeved traditional clothes, sitting at long wooden tables, eating meals that are mostly melted cheese, even though we're in a record heat wave. A couple times, I pass by one of those wood cutouts where you put your face through to take a photo. These are of a man and woman in traditional Swiss clothes out in the mountains.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  And everywhere I go, from every direction, I can hear yodeling.

• 3:17Roman Mars?

  Some people here have been yodeling all their lives, like Anita Fieleger from central Switzerland.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm a mountain girl. I have seven sisters and brothers. And then we take yodeling and music as a hobby and a family, yeah.

• 3:35Roman Mars?

  Others are here to just bask in the sounds, like Francesca Morgan and Gabriela Santa Maria.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  I've always found it very attractive, very beautiful, all that has to do with folklore. In any culture, folklore is the best thing ever.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Francesca and Gabriela live in the area, and I met them as they were walking between food stalls set up to look like mountain chalets. They'd just come from a yodeling class, their first time trying it.

• 4:11Roman Mars?

  That was wonderful. Thank you so much. Yodelerfest is, at its core, a celebration of an old and beloved folk tradition. Some of the melodies drifting out from the street corners and buildings are the same ones you could hear in a small mountain town hundreds of years ago.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  But beyond Yodelerfest and the streets of Basel, yodeling has had a much bigger and much more international arc. Because in the early 19th century, yodeling broke containment. This very Swiss tradition escaped the Alps, traveled across the Atlantic, and helped define a quintessentially American style of music.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Most of us know what a yodel sounds like, but maybe not how it's made. That unmistakable sound of the yodel is the result of a physiological flip that happens inside the singer's body.

• 5:10Speaker 04

  The yodel is a singing technique where we use the different registers. So for example, the head voice,

• 5:18Speaker 04

  or the chest voice.

• 5:23Speaker 04

  And very typical for yodeling is to switch between that two.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Nadia Ras is one of the leading voices, metaphorically and literally, of Swiss yodeling today.

• 5:37Roman Mars?

  The register switch is something that happens naturally, even accidentally, like if your voice cracks while you're shouting. And people around the world have been making music with this vocal quirk for centuries.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  In Iran, it's called terir singing.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  In Georgia, krimanchuli.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Within the Alps, different countries and even different valleys have their own unique versions of this singing. There's a classic Swiss yodel,

• 6:17Speaker 02

  which is markedly different than, say, an Austrian yodel.

• 6:27Roman Mars?

  Despite what we know about its regional variations, the origins of the Alpine yodel are shrouded in mountain mist.

• 6:36Speaker 05

  History is just a loose end. It's in the dark. We cannot say it goes back to this and that century because we don't have written documents about it. We don't have artifacts, like musical instruments.

• 6:50Roman Mars?

  This is Yannick Way, a musicologist who has studied Alpine music. He also plays the alp horn, you know, the horns that the guys play in the reggae commercials? Yannick says that some of the earliest yodelers were probably cattle herders in the Alps. And one of the earliest possible references to yodeling is a document from around the year 400 that describes some Alpine singing as, quote, "Yuyilate carmine diaboli", which an Austrian folklorist in the 20th century translated as "Tootle of a Devilish Song".

• 7:22Speaker 02

  More reliable documentation picks up around the 16th century, when travelers through the Alps described a type of music unique to the region. In French, it would come to be known as "rondé vache", and in German, "kurian".

• 7:36Speaker 05

  In English, it's usually translated as "cattle call", and this is sort of a name for a bunch of different music. Some of it yodeled, some of it sung, maybe without yodeling, and some of it played on the Alpine horn or on different instruments.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  The reason cattle herders were devilishly toodling up in the mountains is debated. Musicologists think yodeling could have been a way for those herders to communicate across long distances.

• 8:03Speaker 05

  So on the Alps, it was very scarcely populated territory. If you were working on the mountains herding animals, it was maybe a very lonely thing to do. And you needed something to communicate over distances, both to communicate to other people that you are fine, that you are in good health, and so on, and also to call cows and other animals.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Another theory is that yodeling was part of religious ceremonies.

• 8:35Speaker 05

  For ritual purposes, for sort of, we could today say magic.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  And there's also the fact that it's just fun to yodel. Imagine, you're out, miles from your home, with only the company of your herd. You can shout into the mountain air, and your echo answers back.

• 8:57Roman Mars?

  For centuries, these yodels bounced around the Alps, entertaining lonely herders, maybe being sung in mountain taverns or around a family dinner table. But in the 1700s, a shift came that would help launch the yodel from a pastoral pastime into a global sensation.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  What that change looked like was a surge of interest from people who weren't herding cows.

• 9:19Roman Mars?

  In the 18th and 19th centuries, European travelers were embarking on grand tours of the continent. Europe's young elite would drink wine, study art, and generally acquire a sense of worldliness to flaunt back home. Basically, a Regency-era gap year.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Popular destinations included Rome, Paris, and the snowy expanse of the Swiss Alps.

• 9:43Roman Mars?

  And with wealthy foreigners arriving to take in the sights and sounds of Switzerland, yodelers couldn't help but notice.

• 9:51Speaker 05

  It was also then an opportunity for people to make some money by performing in touristic locations, on the countryside, also on mountains.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  With tourism, yodeling transformed from a cattle call into a performance. Singers worked the yodel into songs, singing a verse and then yodeling a chorus, what's called a yodel lead, compared to a nature yodel, done without lyrics.

• 10:15Roman Mars?

  Performers also took some festive liberties. No true cattle herder would wear something special to sing to their cows. But these performance yodelers wanted to lay it on thick for the tourists. They put on their tracts, the traditional folksy outfits, to play up the exoticism of their homeland.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  Pretty soon, there were suspended yodelers at every turn.

• 10:37Speaker 05

  That also led to a backlash by the authorities, where there were too many of these beggars going around with a horn or just singing. Well, it became a bit annoying to the tourists.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  In his book, A Tramp Abroad, Mark Twain writes about a hike in Switzerland where he heard a shepherd yodeling. He gives the shepherd some money to keep singing. He does the same with another shepherd later on, and another, then another. Eventually, Twain pays the locals to stop singing. He writes, "There is somewhat too much of the yodeling in the Alps."

• 11:12Roman Mars?

  Luckily, not everyone agreed with Mark Twain. Tourists to the Alps heard yodeling and were captivated. It was this otherworldly echoing sound, unlike anything they'd ever heard. Some people were so taken that they wanted to find a way to write down the yodel and bring it back with them.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Unfortunately for them, yodeling was an oral tradition without any sheet music.

• 11:35Speaker 05

  We have really funny exchange of letters, you know, where somebody from the city in Zurich was asking his friend to deliver a notation of one of these cattle calls. And he said, "You know, I've been trying so hard to get one, but if I ask the people here in the village for it, they just laugh at me, they just make fun of me. And when they're singing, it goes on for an hour. And how am I supposed to write that down?"

• 12:02Speaker 02

  People did eventually figure out how to write down a yodel. And pretty soon, the sounds of the Alps drifted out into the wider world.

• 12:10Roman Mars?

  Yodeling reached Switzerland's close neighbors in continental Europe and then further into the British Isles. But nowhere did it take hold more forcefully than across the ocean in the United States, where it was about to create a new, very American genre of music.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Yodeling first reached the United States in the early 1800s, when troops of European singers traveled across the Atlantic to perform for American audiences. They came with their special outfits and traditional songs, ready to delight the crowds with the exotic sounds of the Alps.

• 12:44Roman Mars?

  It's worth noting, this probably wouldn't have been the first time Americans were hearing a vocal flip in music. Many people were already familiar with the field holler, a way of singing practiced by enslaved people working on farms and plantations in the South. Here is an example, recorded in 1939, performed by Thomas J. Marshall.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  But this distinct Alpine-style of yodeling took off in part because European yodelers were offering a performance, a costume spectacle. And before long, Swiss, German, and Austrian yodelers became a fixture of the American entertainment landscape.

• 13:31Roman Mars?

  American imitators also jumped on the bandwagon. And over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries, yodeling became fully incorporated into the racial melting pot of American entertainment.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Yodeling was everywhere. It became a staple of blackface minstrel shows. At the same time, white performers also imitated the field holler. And black musicians yodeled on the vaudeville stage.

• 13:55Roman Mars?

  The yodel was one influence of many, being mixed and matched by American entertainers. Then, a singing railroad brakeman from Mississippi came along and took the yodel to new heights.

• 14:14Roman Mars?

  Those are the dulcet tones of a man named Jimmy Rogers.

• 14:21Speaker 02

  Rogers grew up across the southern United States, working on the railroad and playing music whenever he could.

• 14:27Speaker 04

  At the time, Rogers perceived of himself just as a popular entertainer. He listened to everything he could get his hands on. He toured with different groups. He was always willing to perform if someone was willing to pay him.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  Jocelyn Neal is a professor and historian who focuses on American popular music. She says he was a savvy entertainer with an ear for whatever might get an audience. He played what was called at the time "hillbilly music," a catch-all term for music from the white, working-class South. But he also heard folk and blues music while traveling around. He picked up work songs from black colleagues on the railroad. He played medicine shows and minstrel shows. He had a stint with a jazz band, and later a string band.

• 15:07Roman Mars?

  Jimmy was a jack-of-all-trades. And in 1927, he went into a recording studio and laid down something unexpected, an original song he'd been working on called "Tea for Texas."

• 15:34Speaker 02

  You could really hear the blues influence. This is the style of music Rogers would have heard, played mostly by black musicians, all through the South.

• 15:42Speaker 04

  The songs themselves that Jimmy Rogers is recording are very much in what we would call a blues form. They use the rhymed couplets, they use the use of a refrain, they come with the same chord progressions. Now, he modified them here and there. But again, a regular listener on the street could listen to this and say, "Oh yeah, I hear the blues form in there. I hear a 12-bar blues chord progression." So that blues song form was present, and the yodel was added into it.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Rogers never explained where he got his yodeling. He surely heard all types of head-chest register flips, including from black yodelers on vaudeville stages. But his style traces back to Alpine singers.

• 16:30Speaker 04

  I'm pretty sure from having listened to a bunch of the source material that Jimmy Rogers was borrowing a vaudeville, stylized performance technique that is absolutely linked to Tyrolean yodeling and is a European import.

• 16:42Roman Mars?

  When Jimmy Rogers recorded an Alpine yodel over a 12-bar blues progression, he set off a chemical reaction in the music industry. His sound wasn't quite the blues or the standard hillbilly music of the time, or anything else. It was what we would now call "country."

• 17:01Speaker 02

  And people loved it.

• 17:04Speaker 04

  It absolutely was astonishing how popular this music was. He caught the attention of a broad population of people who were really connected to his music in a way that I think it's very hard for a regular listener today to think. We'd have to think about a superstar today at the level of global attention to match what Jimmy Rogers was able to do with the American population as a vernacular performer in the late 1920s. The stories that we hear are that people would literally go down to their local store, their local general store, to get their daily supplies and a Jimmy Rogers record, whatever had come out.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Rogers wasn't the very first to combine blues and yodeling. The idea had already been percolating for a while. And a black composer named Clarence Williams had written a song called "Yodeling Blues" earlier in the 20s. But Jimmy Rogers was the first one to turn that combination into a commercial hit.

• 17:58Roman Mars?

  Today, Jimmy Rogers is known as the "father of country music." Rogers sits alongside a very few number of artists, like the Carter family, who pioneered the genre by blending all sorts of American influences: blues, field hollering, old British and Irish folk songs. And Rogers' thing was his yodel.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  Rogers' producer called his first big hit, "Tea for Texas," a "blue yodel." And that was just "blue yodel number one." Rogers would record a dozen more, including one with Louis Armstrong on trumpet.

• 18:42Roman Mars?

  Other performers wanted to do what was popular, and Jimmy Rogers was popular. So before long, yodeling was all over the proto-country scene.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Lots of hillbilly artists used the yodel, finding all sorts of ways to catch people's attention, like Mary Jane and Carolyn DeZurich, sisters from Minnesota who became popular on the radio in the 1930s.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  While the DeZurich sisters were doing that, Gene Autry was yodeling his way into Hollywood.

• 19:22Roman Mars?

  Autry became known as the singing cowboy, and the films he was in shaped the iconography of the West with his big hat, his broken heart, and his rhinestone suit.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  Get this: rhinestones have an Alpine origin, too. The name refers to clear stones that were found in the Rhine River, which originates in Switzerland. The word was applied to glass and plastic beads later on.

• 19:45Roman Mars?

  There's not as much Alpine-style yodeling in modern country music compared to the music made in the 20s and 30s.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  But what has carried over is the head chest register flip. That little flip, heard in the yodel and the field holler, remains an essential part of a country musician's repertoire. It conveys the emotion of a lonesome cowboy, borrowing some of that heartbreaking pastoral quality of the mountains. For example, with Hank Williams's version of the song "Lovesick Blues."

• 20:21Speaker 04

  In that song, he uses a vocal break where he sings a word.

• 20:27Speaker 04

  And then he splits his voice across this vocal break, up to a high register, comes back down, and then repeats that process in the middle of a word. So it's a little bit of a different technique than what Jimmy Rogers was doing. But again, if we're taking that broader categorization of yodels as singing with multiple vocal registers, then Hank Williams is absolutely doing it.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Today, the influence of yodeling has become so woven into the fabric of country music that most of us wouldn't even identify it as yodeling anymore. The vocal flip, the crying steel guitar, it just sounds like country.

• 21:11Speaker 02

  When you look at the dramatic evolution of yodeling in America, how it jumped from vaudeville performances to cowboy films and the world's biggest country stages, it seems a little odd that yodeling back in Switzerland often looks and sounds like it did in the 1800s: people in traditional outfits singing traditional songs, evoking a pastoral Swiss yesteryear.

• 21:37Roman Mars?

  There's a reason today's Swiss yodeling still feels so traditional and nostalgic. In the 1940s, while Gene Autry was yodeling in his rhinestones, Switzerland was having a very different experience. Europe was embroiled in the Second World War, and Switzerland wanted to avoid any association with Germany.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  One way to do this was to distinguish themselves as much as possible as different and separate from their Nazi neighbors. Here's Yannick Way again.

• 22:05Speaker 05

  Switzerland had this so-called geistige Landesverteidigung, this somewhat spiritual defense of the nation, where yodeling became important as something that distinguished Switzerland from its German-speaking neighbors, even though maybe from the musical tradition we're much closer than you think.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  The message was very much that we may speak German, but we are not Germans. Our yodel sounds nothing like their yodel. So please, for the love of God, leave us out of this.

• 22:40Roman Mars?

  One weapon in this cultural defense was a yodeling textbook published in 1943. That book is called... Oh, Christ. Okay.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Also known as the Swiss Yodeling Association Training Fundamentals for Yodeling Women and Yodeling Men.

• 23:08Roman Mars?

  The book, whose name I said before perfectly, laid out some standards for Swiss yodeling: not Bavarian yodeling, not Austrian, just pure Swiss yodeling. It said which melodies to sing and which techniques to use.

• 23:22Speaker 05

  There's a scene in there, like, on one of the first pages, and it says, "Everything un-Swiss in yodeling has to be eradicated."

• 23:29Speaker 02

  In addition to the book, the Yodeling Association put on contests where judges would favor certain types of yodels over others. And for many years, singers tended to stick to a textbook, jury-approved set of melodies, sounds, and flourishes.

• 23:43Roman Mars?

  The Yodeling Association did keep people yodeling, but this focus on a regulation Swiss style narrowed what had been a pretty diverse tradition. And the influence of these regulations and norms lasted long after the war was over. Still, you can't keep a good yodel down. And today, Switzerland is enjoying a surge of interest in yodeling, especially with younger generations who want to play with a vocal technique that is, let's face it, very fun.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  I talked to Nadia Ras about this at Yodeler Fest. And one thing that has surprised me so far walking around is how many young people there are, are yodeling. Is that a change you've seen recently?

• 24:25Speaker 04

  I think it's a change which developed since three, four, five years. So I think it's much... The yodel community, it's much younger than five years before.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  What do you think that means for the future of yodeling?

• 24:40Speaker 04

  This is a very good sign, of course. So I think... So it means that yodel will stay alive.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Nadia has been part of this preservation. In 2018, students at the Hochschule Lutzern specifically requested a college-level yodeling program, and she was selected to run it.

• 25:01Roman Mars?

  The program isn't Alpine cosplay. It honors the tradition of yodeling while pushing it forward. Students study the history of yodeling and what it sounded like before the rules and competitions and clubs. They listen to archival recordings, to American country songs, and they write and perform new yodels.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  On the day I visited, students put on a concert that included a song written by Nadia.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  One alum of the program is Andrea Kutil, who's now yodeling with her band Quartz.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  And she also blends yodeling with jazz, classical music, and other genres.

• 25:51Speaker 06

  I had the opportunity to yodel with a percussionist from Cuba, so it fits with other types of music as well. So it's really cool to interact with different types of music.

• 26:06Roman Mars?

  The reinvention of yodeling doesn't stop with Nadia and her students. For every traditional melody being honored and preserved in a Swiss yodeling club, there's another young artist taking the yodel and doing something entirely different, like the Swiss Spanish artist called Vagamundos, who samples yodels in reggaeton tracks.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  When I listen to Vagamundos, or Andrea's band Quartz, or any of these other new artists, I can't help but feel a sense of déjà vu, like what happened to yodeling in America might be happening now in Switzerland. Like Jimmy Rogers before them, Switzerland's new generation of yodelers is taking the yodel, flipping it on its head, and possibly changing music forever.

• 27:17Roman Mars?

  After the break, some of our favorite yodeling deep cuts.

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• 30:09Roman Mars?

  So Gabe, this story had some really amazing archival recordings, but there are also a lot of yodels that got left on the cutting room floor, and we wanted to play a few of them.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Yes, as I was reporting this story, I got so fascinated by this era between when yodeling first came to the US and when it ended up in country music. And so these European yodelers, they came over like in the early 1800s. The Blue Yodel from Jimmy Rogers, that's 1927. So there's like a century of yodeling just kind of bouncing around America at the time.

• 30:39Roman Mars?

  Totally, totally. Okay, let's learn more.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this really blew my mind that the first known recordings of yodeling were made in the United States. This is something that Yannick, who we heard from in the story, was telling me. And he sent me this. It's George P. Watson is the performer, and this is from the late 1890s.

• 30:59Speaker 07

  Alpine specialty with yodel, sung by Mr. George P. Watson, Edison Records. Roll on the silver moon, light of the treasury on his way.

• 31:23Roman Mars?

  Well, so that was not recorded in Switzerland, but recorded in America. That is so amazing to me.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, the very first recording of a yodel was from 1892, I believe, also made in the United States. But this one was definitely one of the earliest. It makes sense on the one hand because the technology was in the US. There were all these people yodeling and everything. But then also, the Swiss experts I talked to were intrigued by this because we don't have an equivalent from the Alps at the time. Like, there's sheet music maybe, but it's an oral tradition. It's evolving over time, and it's not captured at any kind of snapshot like that until we have an ability to record it. So we don't really know what yodeling was sounding like anywhere else in the world at this time.

• 32:06Roman Mars?

  That's amazing. So what other yodels do you have for me?

• 32:09Speaker 02

  So this next one comes from the 20th century, when a lot of popular performers are sort of using the yodel as part of their toolkit. And this is from 1924. It's fascinating. It's a group called the Seven Musical Magpies, and it's called the Calliope Song because they're not just yodeling, but they are imitating the Calliope, that big steam-powered circus pipe organ.

• 32:47Roman Mars?

  I love that.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. I really enjoyed that one. I love that one of the big influences here is technology. Like, the Calliope was the sensation and...

• 32:58Roman Mars?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're like beatboxing. You know, like they're imitating the sound of an instrument. Yeah.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, these singers, they think, you know what sounds like a Calliope? Yodeling.

• 33:07Roman Mars?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  And that's some amazing vocal technique, which is also something that a lot of the Swiss yodelers I talked to were really impressed by, that they hear... You know, we heard the Zurich Sisters, too, in the story, that they've heard some of these yodels and are impressed at the technique and everything, especially given, you know, these aren't people learning it from their, from their families out in the Alps, passing down from generation to generation. These are entertainers sort of doing what's popular, picking up the trade from others.

• 33:34Roman Mars?

  And what about the other yodeling blues singers? Like, you mentioned in the story that Jimmy Rogers was the first person, you know, to kind of hit it big, combining blues and yodeling. But he wasn't the first to do it, right?

• 33:46Speaker 02

  Right, so Jimmy Rogers, you know, he has that sort of Alpine-derived yodel, sung over blues chords. But that basic mix of blues and yodeling had been tested and recorded. There's the song I mentioned, the Yodeling Blues. It's written by Clarence Williams, and it's sung by Sarah Martin and Eva Taylor. And it was recorded in the 20s.

• 34:18Roman Mars?

  That's really nice. It's not quite as yodeling as some of the others, but I enjoy the tone of it.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not the full-on little old lady who styled, you know, the Jimmy Rogers was doing, but it does have that melody of the yodel. And lyrically, the song is wistful and romantic, like a lot of these yodeling songs. And that's something the yodel certainly evokes. The other thing that this song speaks to is an undercurrent throughout the history of country music, which is the erasure of the way black artists contributed to the origins of the genre. The Seven Musical Magpies, Clarence Williams, Sarah Martin, Eva Taylor, these were all black artists, and they're playing with the same influences as Jimmy Rogers. They're doing it earlier than him. But as the record industry built up, they were not the ones ultimately to profit from it.

• 35:01Roman Mars?

  Yeah, it's another story that we hear over and over again across all of recorded music. Well, this was so fascinating, Gabe. I love this tour through the yodel and these sort of leftover yodels on the cutting room floor. Such a fun story. Thank you for bringing it to us.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  Thanks a lot, Roman.

• 35:23Roman Mars?

  99% Invisible was reported this week by Gabe Bullard and edited by Kelly Prime, mixed by Martin Gonzalez, music by Swan Real with help from Mia Byrne and APM. Fact-checking by Graham Hesha. Special thanks this week to Linda Golden for interpretation help. Gabe actually has a new book called Against Convenience, which is out now. It's an exploration of the modern convenience culture, and I can't wait to read it. It is right up my alley and probably yours, too. Kathy Too is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is our digital director. Delaney Hall is the senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Jason DeLeon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Le, Laishma Dawn, Joe Rosenberg, Jacob Medina Gleason, Talon and Rain Stradly, and me, Roman Mars.

• 36:06Roman Mars?

  The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of the SiriusXM Podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora Building in beautiful Uptown, Oakland, California. You can find us on all the usual social media sites as well as our own Discord server. There's a link to that, as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99pi.org.

• 36:43Roman Mars?

  This episode is presented by Air France. Air France Business Cabin offers comfort from start to finish. Enjoy priority check-in and boarding, followed by access to peaceful lounges. Onboard, savor menus created by renowned French chefs paired with wines and champagne selected by Smollet. Stay connected with free high-speed Wi-Fi. Then unwind in a fully adjustable lie-flat bed with a mattress topper developed with Sofitel MyBed, a signature touch of French hospitality. The art of travel elevated because Air France Business Cabin goes further in every detail to make your journey exceptional.

• 37:24Speaker 07

  This podcast is supported by Nurtac ODT, Remedy Pant. We know you didn't ask for an interruption, but migraine doesn't wait for the right moment to interrupt either. It just barges in, takes your time, and throws everything off. So when migraine takes your time, take Nurtac. It's for the acute treatment of migraine with or without aura in adults. Nurtac can provide pain relief in two hours, which can last up to two days. Ask your healthcare provider if Nurtac is right for you because your time is for you, not migraine. Don't take if allergic to Nurtac ODT. Allergic reactions can occur even days after use. Get help right away for trouble breathing, rash, swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or throat. High blood pressure and Raynaud's Syndrome can occur. Get help for high blood pressure, numbness,

• 38:07Speaker 07

  coolness, pain, or color changes in fingers and toes. Common side effect is nausea. For full prescribing information, call 1-833-4-NUR-TAC or visit nurtec.com. All right, back to your podcast, playlist, or whatever's keeping you going today. The Colonel's cooked up a new $10 bucket of the day just for you. Monday, 10 wings for $10. Tuesday, eight-piece fried chicken for $10. Wednesday, eight tenders for $10. Thursday, 10 wings for $10. Friday, 24 nuggets for... Oh, you guessed it, didn't you? $10. The $10 bucket of the day deal. Every weekday, only at KFC, it's finger-licking good. Prices and participation vary. Supplies last, not available on third-party ordering platforms.

• 38:52Speaker 07

  Tax extra.