Mini-Stories: Volume 19

Cheeky highway signs, Jane Fonda’s surprising side hustle, a dynamite twist on legacy, and the Greeks’ ideal foot obsession—expect the unexpected.

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

• 0:00Roman Mars?

  This fall, LL Bean is celebrating the moments people look forward to all year. The first school drop-off, the first sweater-weather day, and the first chilly evening around the fire pit. For over 100 years, LL Bean has been part of these traditions: crunching leaves in Maine-made Bean boots, cheering from the sidelines in Scotch plaid flannel, and walking the dog in a rugged field coat. So grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean: Be an Outsider. If you're a small business, the right hire can be make or break. Indeed-sponsored jobs gets you quality candidates when you need them most.

• 0:43Roman Mars?

  Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed-sponsored jobs. This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Everything outside might be frightful, but a new batch of mini-stories are here to make the next 30 minutes or so absolutely delightful. So grab something warm, gather the kids around the old wireless transceiver, and enjoy stories

• 1:27Roman Mars?

  about funny and surprisingly controversial highway signs, Jane Fonda saving you money on rent, the most famous act of contrition of all time, or possibly the greatest PR comeback of all time, depending on who you're asking. And we learn together that the most accomplished artists of the classical world have all agreed that I, your host, have the most beautiful feet that a person can have. Let's go.

• 1:55Roman Mars?

  So I'm joined by our producer, Chris Perube. Hey, Chris.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Roman, it is the most wonderful time of the year. Great to be here.

• 2:02Roman Mars?

  It's a delight to have you. So what is the story you have for us today?

• 2:06Speaker 01

  So, Roman, I know I'm always comparing America to Canada as resident Canadian guy on the show.

• 2:11Roman Mars?

  Yes, I'm well aware. Yeah.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Look, my New Year's resolution, I'm going to tone down the Canada stuff for next year on the show.

• 2:17Roman Mars?

  I don't think you have to, but you do what feels right to you.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. But I feel like I'm always making these comparisons that are like, this is better in Canada. This is better in Canada. One thing I do prefer in America is the electronic highway safety sign, like a light board, and it has text on it. And it's a thing that will say like, "Left lane closed ahead", something like that, right?

• 2:39Roman Mars?

  Got it, got it, got it. Okay, so why do you like the ones in the US better?

• 2:42Speaker 01

  In Canada, the signs are always bland, right? They will say something like, "Don't drive drunk", and then it will also say that same thing in French, right?

• 2:49Roman Mars?

  Okay.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  But to express the same message in the US, I have found there are often jokes. So let me give you an example. Pennsylvania, recently, they had a highway sign around the 4th of July that read, "Don't drive star-spangled, hammered." Okay, here I can give you some other ones. These are all over the country. So in Mississippi, they ran a sign this year that said, "Four eyes in Mississippi, two eyes on the road", that's pretty good. In Massachusetts, it's, "Use your blinker", I like this one. In New Jersey, they have one that said, "Slow down, this ain't Thunder Road", so a joke for the Springsteen dads. And this phenomenon, it's actually across the country. So, Roman, have you actually seen any of these?

• 3:31Roman Mars?

  I don't think, I, these are very prominent in California, but I'm enjoying these quite a bit.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're fun. So I was curious about these, and it turns out it's a very involved process to put these up.

• 3:41Roman Mars?

  I would imagine so. So tell me more.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  I actually found this out because I talked to somebody who writes these signs.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  My name's Matt Burding. I'm the Press Secretary at the Ohio Department of Transportation. What ODOT does is make sure that the snow is cleared in the wintertime, make sure that the roads are passable in the summertime. We also have a big role to play in safety projects across the state.

• 4:03Roman Mars?

  Oh, wow. He's the, he has the modulation of a AM radio broadcaster. He's a good voice.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually, he was a radio broadcaster for many years before he was at the Ohio Department of Transportation. So that's, that's why.

• 4:13Roman Mars?

  That makes sense. Wow.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  So Matt works at ODOT, Ohio Department of Transportation, and they have about 200 of these electronic highway signs. And Matt says their primary goal, it's to convey emergency information or information like, "Left lane closed ahead," right? But most of the time, they don't have messages like this they need to share, so they have all of this free space on the signs. And Matt says a couple of years ago, ODOT started playing around with the funny signs, and they kept doing it because, according to Matt, they just make a much bigger impact.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Think about the Super Bowl, and you watch the ads during the Super Bowl. Which ads are you most likely talking about Monday morning? You're talking about the ones that made you laugh, or the ones that made you have an emotional reaction.

• 5:01Roman Mars?

  I mean, that certainly makes sense to me. So where do these specific jokes come from? Like, who writes the jokes?

• 5:06Speaker 01

  So, Robin, in Ohio, where Matt works, they actually have a writers' room coming up with these jokes.

• 5:12Roman Mars?

  Of course. That's great.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  So, four times a year, they have a meeting. Everybody comes to this meeting with like a list of ideas. They debate them, and then they settle out a couple that are going to end up on the signs.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  I mean, sometimes I'll bring, you know, a couple dozen ideas, and 30% of them don't fly. And sometimes you bring, you know, just a handful of them, and they all go. So it just varies.

• 5:35Roman Mars?

  Yeah, that sounds like every pitch room I've ever been in. I mean, 30% is a pretty, pretty good failure rate, honestly.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, yeah, if our pitch meetings went that well, I think we'd be having a really good pitch meeting.

• 5:47Roman Mars?

  I know, exactly.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  But according to Matt, they're coming up with these jokes, and there's a couple of parameters they have to work with. So, obviously, first thing, it has to fit on the sign, right?

• 5:57Roman Mars?

  Right.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  In Ohio, most of the signs are about 17 characters across three lines. So that's not nothing, but that's not an unlimited amount of space. So first thing, it has to fit on the sign. It also, obviously, shouldn't be offensive, shouldn't hurt anybody's feelings, things like that. But above all, it has to make every- Everybody in the room laugh.

• 6:14Roman Mars?

  Yeah, which is probably the hardest criterion of all because humor is subjective.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Of course. Yeah. And Matt says part of how they correct for that is they always try to make sure they have people from different generations at each meeting. So he says they always make sure there's like a Gen Z staff person in there. There's a Gen X or, you know, and if everybody's laughing, then it's probably going to work with the general public.

• 6:36Roman Mars?

  There has to be someone there to tell you what cap means.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 6:40Roman Mars?

  That's super smart. So what kind of jokes work for that whole room?

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Matt told me there's a couple of subjects that always tend to work pretty well. So the first one is holidays. So a couple of years ago, ODOT had this sign for the holiday season. It was visiting in-laws, slow down, get there late.

• 6:58Roman Mars?

  Solid.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  One of them, for example, around Thanksgiving that we run every year is Turkey says buckle buckle. It's goofy. It's one of those things that I can certainly hear a dad saying as he's driving with his family to grandma's house for Thanksgiving dinner. And the kids are all probably rolling their eyes going, great dad. Awful joke. Yeah, it's on the sign. You guys are all buckled up, right?

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Second inspiration is local references. So you'll make a joke about a football game coming up. Be like, you know, don't be like Michigan, drive defensively. I don't know. I'm just making up an example. I don't know if Michigan's football team is bad at defense, but you'll make some joke about a geography pun, right? A lot of states do this and Matt says the ODOT team actually will steal signs from other states and then just update them with their own local references.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  I'm going to be honest with you. Look, we all talk to each other. So, you know, what's a good idea in Colorado is probably a good idea in Ohio, too. I don't remember which state it was. I want to say maybe it was Utah that did camp in the mountains, not the left lane. We don't really have mountains in Ohio, but we did camp in Ohio State Parks, not the left lane. I think Missouri does camp in the Ozarks, not the left lane.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Matt says this is like part of the process is that states loves to steal from each other. And like they'll meet up at a conference and they'll trade these jokes and they'll be like, oh, that works. I could, I could do this for mine. So you got geography, you got holidays. The signs that get the most attention though, these are the ones in Ohio and across America that everybody seems to love. They are inspired by pop culture. So these are the signs that go viral. These are the signs people are posting on social media. Roman, could I share a couple of the pop culture jokes?

• 8:38Roman Mars?

  I would be disappointed if you did not.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Okay. So here we go. Arizona, they ran this one around Christmas a couple of years ago. Yippee ki yay sober drivers.

• 8:47Roman Mars?

  Oh my God. Okay.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  So that's, that's of course a Die Hard reference.

• 8:50Roman Mars?

  Yeah, no, of course. The ultimate Christmas movie. Yeah.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  More recently, Mississippi ran one that said texting and driving. Say, hi, it's me. I'm the problem. It's me. I mean, it's a simple one, but you know, Taylor Swift was really big that summer. That makes sense.

• 9:03Roman Mars?

  Yeah.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  And pop culture jokes are great because you know, they're more relevant than your kind of dad jokey turkey gobble gobble jokes, but it's kind of high risk too, right? Because not everybody is going to get the joke necessarily.

• 9:16Roman Mars?

  Yeah, no, that makes sense to me. We don't all consume the same pop culture, especially today. Yeah.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Right. And that can be really alienating, right? So Matt actually has a perfect example of this where they tried a pop culture one and it just went wrong.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Being in Ohio, if you know the movie A Christmas Story, very popular in Ohio because it was filmed in the Cleveland area. So one year we put on the message boards, life is fragile. Slow down. And we spelled out phonetically fragile because if you're familiar with The Christmas Story, you know, the scene where the dad opens up the, you know, gets the box of the big prize that he wins and like, you know, fragile, must be Italian. There are people who have not seen A Christmas Story, believe it or not, who read that and were like, what in the world is ODOT trying to say here? You're driving on the highway at 70 miles an hour. We can't explain it to you. You just got to get it. And if you don't get it, then that's probably not a good message to run.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  So in general, people love these signs. You know, they're popular, they get shared on social media. But there is a problem. One group in particular really does not like them. And that group is the Federal Highway Administration.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Oh, no. Those guys.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Those guys. Well, the FHWA, they're in charge of highway safety for the United States. And in their opinion, these signs can be kind of a distraction. So a couple of years ago, they actually made New Jersey take down one of these signs. So the sign said, "Hold on to your butts. Help prevent forest fires." Ha, ha, ha. Funny joke. But what happened is people were actually slowing down to take pictures of the sign, which is obviously not safe. It's kind of working at cross purposes to what the sign is supposed to be doing. So they actually told the state, "You have to take this down."

• 11:03Speaker 02

  That is disappointing. I get where they're coming from, though.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Right. But earlier this year, the FHWA, they put out their national guidelines for highway safety. They update these every couple of years. And it was a little bit like mom and dad turning on all the lights at a party and telling everybody to go home. Because they included guidelines for what a highway safety sign should say. They said it should be informative, it should be sober. So here it is. This is the FHWA example of a good highway sign. They say, "Unbuckled seat belts equals fine plus points."

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Oh, no. That's dreadful.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  It's really dry. Yeah.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  So is that it? Is that the end for the funny highway sign?

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Well, the guidelines came out in January, and suddenly there were all these newspaper stories that were saying like, "Funny signs will be banned." You know, "Say goodbye to the highway signs." It's actually not quite what's happening here, because these are guidelines, right? But Matt says it's really important to him to keep some humor in the signs, because there's evidence of this. There's studies that show this. When you're being entertained, you're more likely to retain these kind of messages. And it makes people think about their driving. So in that way, it does save lives.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  I don't think we're going to suddenly see a huge swing in fatalities or crashes because of these. But I think we are taking little bites at it. And it's worth it. It doesn't cost the taxpayers anything extra. And I certainly don't think it makes it worse. So if it makes it better for even a handful of people, then I think it's worth that effort.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Now, Roman, if you have an idea for a funny highway sign, I have some good news. You can share your pitches with ODOT. There's a website for it, and Matt says they consider every pitch that's sent in.

• 12:46Roman Mars?

  Oh, my God.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  If you enjoy the institution of the funny highway sign, you have an opportunity. It's at the website, zero deaths dot Ohio dot gov. So check it out.

• 12:57Roman Mars?

  I'm going to spend some quality time on this. Well, thank you, Chris. This is delightful.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Thanks, Roman.

• 13:06Roman Mars?

  Okay, so we're here with 99PI producer Vivian Le. What do you have for us this year?

• 13:10Speaker 03

  So I wanted to share a story that was one of the more interesting detours that I stumbled upon while reporting another story. So you remember an episode that we did in early 2024? That's also in contention for the longest podcast title ever. It was called, "Warning: This podcast contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer or other reproductive harm."

• 13:32Roman Mars?

  Of course, it's one of my favorite titles ever. So it's a good title. Love it.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  And if other listeners missed that one, it was essentially about the history of this law in California that passed in 1986 that required all California businesses to put a warning label on any products that contain cancer-causing chemicals. And a big part of the reason why that law originally passed was because Jane Fonda was a huge proponent of that proposition.

• 13:58Roman Mars?

  Yes, yeah. I mean, she was the one who kind of rounded up a ton of these celebrities and, you know, they went on this bus. And it actually brought like a lot of good attention to this proposition.

• 14:10Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly. Chiffy Chase was there. It was a whole thing. But while I was researching that story, I found out that that victory might not have been possible if it weren't for the Jane Fonda workout tapes. Roman, would you care to hear more?

• 14:24Roman Mars?

  Yes, absolutely. I want to hear more.

• 14:26Speaker 03

  Okay, so Jane Fonda has been a huge progressive activist for literally decades. She's probably somewhere getting arrested at a climate rally as we speak. But back in the 1970s, Fonda was this huge anti-war activist. And doing that work, she met another fellow anti-war activist turned state assemblyman. His name was Tom Hayden. And Hayden and Fonda eventually got married. And together, they realized that they needed to influence politics from within the system. So the mid-ish 1970s, they founded a political action committee called the Campaign for Economic Democracy.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  And one of the big goals of the CED, I call it the CED for short, was trying to get progressive new-left candidates into local office. But the problem was that political action committees take a lot of money to run.

• 15:19Speaker 04

  This was a statewide organization that made a huge difference in California.

• 15:25Speaker 03

  This is Jane Fonda in an interview with Democracy Now!

• 15:28Speaker 04

  We elected people that are still serving in public office in California. So we had to raise a lot of money because we had a lot of chapters and there was a recession.

• 15:39Speaker 03

  You see, the CED had to pay for, you know, field offices, staffers put on events, pay for political advertising, all that stuff that helps fund local campaigns. So Fonda was trying to solve this question of how to realistically keep the CED going financially, which was hard because Fonda and Hayden's politics were considered pretty outside of the mainstream at the time. But she says that she got an idea one day after she saw a story about a very controversial politician.

• 16:09Speaker 04

  I read an article that Lyndon LaRouche, that really bad but very wealthy guy, had a computer business that would fund people, that would hold those signs at the airports. And I read an article that said that he supported all that with his computer business.

• 16:22Speaker 03

  So, Roman, do you know who Lyndon LaRouche is?

• 16:25Roman Mars?

  I mean, I know the name. Like, I'd kind of know it. I mean, I kind of think of them as this... As I was growing up, this perennial presidential candidate, I know he was referenced on The Simpsons, which is probably why it's stuck in my head.

• 16:38Speaker 03

  Of course, yes.

• 16:39Roman Mars?

  But let's say for purposes of this story, like, no, tell me more about Lyndon LaRouche.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  Okay, so Lyndon LaRouche was a very prolific conspiracy theorist who spouted a lot of terrible antisemitic and homophobic and racist views. He also claimed that Queen Elizabeth controlled the world's drug trade. Anyway, so LaRouche is also known for unsuccessfully running for president eight consecutive times in a row. He actually holds the record for that. But as you can imagine, Roman, running for president, even unsuccessfully, takes a lot of money. So Fonda read that he was able to fund his political aspirations privately through his computer consulting, software and printing businesses on the side.

• 17:20Speaker 04

  So I thought, okay, what business can I go into that could make money? And it was the workout.

• 17:25Roman Mars?

  The workout? Wait, so-

• 17:27Speaker 03

  The Jane Fonda workout.

• 17:28Roman Mars?

  The Jane Fonda workout?

• 17:29Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 17:30Roman Mars?

  So did the workout exist already? Or her workout exist already? Or did she-

• 17:37Speaker 03

  Okay, so yes.

• 17:38Roman Mars?

  Came first?

• 17:39Speaker 03

  Okay, so a little bit of background on the Jane Fonda workout.

• 17:41Roman Mars?

  Okay, please.

• 17:42Speaker 03

  Exercise is something that had been really important to Jane Fonda for a really long time. But in 1978, around the same time that the CED was getting going, she broke her foot while filming a movie. And she was looking for some like new, low-impact form of exercise that would be less taxing on that part of the body. And she ended up meeting an exercise instructor named Lenny Kazdin, who introduced her to these long, total-body workouts. And she fell in love with it. And she ended up opening a bunch of exercise studios and then eventually releasing the Jane Fonda Workout Book, which was wildly popular.

• 18:17Speaker 05

  And talk about how much money we're talking about here. You blew every one of-

• 18:21Speaker 04

  Tens of millions.

• 18:22Speaker 05

  How long were you on the New York Times Bestseller List for?

• 18:24Speaker 04

  Two years. Two solid years. That is what caused the New York Times to start separating it out into categories. Because to have the Workout Book competing with, you know, Philip Roth or somebody, didn't make any sense.

• 18:38Roman Mars?

  I mean, two years on the Bestseller List, that's really something.

• 18:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a lot. How long was the 99PI book on the Bestseller List?

• 18:44Roman Mars?

  On the Bestseller List? I mean, it was like in the top 10 for like three weeks. So I was pretty proud of that.

• 18:50Speaker 03

  That's pretty good. That's still pretty good.

• 18:53Roman Mars?

  But if it wasn't for her splitting out the list, we would not have ranked because we were in the nonfiction list and not competing with the fiction bestseller list.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  Interesting. Jane Fonda, thank you again for all of your work.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  But yeah, so, you know, eventually in the 1980s, like the early 1980s, Fonda was approached to bring her workout to this new fangled technology called home video. And she said that she was at first actually very hesitant to put out a workout tape. You know, she was a movie star at the time and she thought it would be terrible for her acting career. But she agreed to do it because, you know, A, nobody would ever watch it because this was such a new technology that she barely knew anybody who owned a VCR. And B, she thought it might bring some extra cash in for the CED.

• 19:39Roman Mars?

  And that must have been even more successful because I didn't even know there was a book. You know, like, so like, like, me growing up, it was the Jane Fonda workout tapes. So it must have even eclipsed those.

• 19:49Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, totally. She, she ended up selling over 17 million tapes. And it's actually thought that the Jane Fonda workout tapes were so popular that they led to an increase in VCR sales. And Fonda says that pretty much all of that money went straight into the campaign for economic democracy.

• 20:04Roman Mars?

  Wow. Well, that's incredible. I mean, in addition to like pushing VCR sales, did the tape sales actually move forward the politics of the CED? Like, did it actually change California or world politics?

• 20:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the CED invested in, you know, a bunch of progressive causes in California, like investing in solar power, labor rights, anti-war initiatives, women's rights, of course, Proposition 65. But I think one of the biggest, most tangible successes of the CED was getting rent control laws passed in Santa Monica. And this is something that has actually had a lasting impact on the city and it still exists today.

• 20:40Roman Mars?

  Wow. So if you live in a rent-controlled apartment in the city of Santa Monica, this is essentially because of Jane Fonda and the Jane Fonda workout tapes.

• 20:48Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly. And I actually do have a friend who lived in a rent-controlled apartment in Santa Monica for like 14 years and he only just recently moved out to start a family. And when I learned about this, I texted him and I was just like, Brandon, if you ever meet Jane Fonda, you better thank her for saving you thousands and thousands of dollars.

• 21:11Roman Mars?

  That's perfect. Oh, it's such a fun little side story. I'm glad we could take this little detour as a little bonus from your Prop 65 story, which people should go listen to if they haven't heard it. It's like one of my favorites of recent memory.

• 21:22Speaker 03

  So, thank you.

• 21:23Roman Mars?

  Awesome.

• 21:24Speaker 03

  Merry Christmas to you.

• 21:26Roman Mars?

  Thank you, Vivian.

• 21:26Speaker 03

  Thank you, Roman.

• 21:37Roman Mars?

  Coming up, why the ancient Greeks who believed in a perfect version of everything were obsessed with feet, and how the man who invented dynamite came back from the dead, sort of, to clear his name and ended up creating the most famous prize in the world. That's after the break.

• 21:57Roman Mars?

  This episode is supported by Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every design thing began as something someone imagined, a chair, a sign, whatever device you're listening to this on. Design is imagination with a plan. Claude is an AI built to help you with both. Start with your rough idea, then work with Claude to sketch it, shape it, test it, and build it. Anthropic built Claude to help you discover more. Learn more at claude.ai/99invisible. Ready to give your home a style refresh? Article makes it easy to create a stylish, long-lasting home at an unbeatable price. They offer a curated selection of mid-century modern coastal and Scandi-inspired pieces that will make a perfect addition to your

• 22:42Roman Mars?

  home. All Article collections are carefully curated, focusing solely on high-quality, meaningful pieces that will stand the test of time. And with Article's 30-day satisfaction guarantee, you can shop with confidence. I'm trying to think of any of the Article furniture I haven't talked about at this point. I have couches, I have dining room sets, I have sideboards, I have, what do you call it, a media center thing that you put a TV on, side tables, end tables, chairs. All of them are still in heavy use in my house, and all of them have held up great. Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit article.com/99 and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout.

• 23:24Roman Mars?

  That's article.com/99 for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. Some of the most important design choices are the ones that go unnoticed. The details that together make an experience feel intuitive, comfortable, and above all, exhilarating. At Acura, that means looking closely at how every detail can make your experience behind the wheel more rewarding. Every lesson learned and every idea refined becomes part of what comes next, and it lives inside every MDX, ADX, and Integra. That's precision crafted performance. That's Acura. This fall, LL Bean is celebrating the moments people look forward to all year.

• 24:08Roman Mars?

  The first school drop off, the first sweater weather day, and the first chilly evening around the fire pit. For over 100 years, LL Bean has been part of these traditions. Crunching leaves in Maine-made Bean boots, cheering from the sidelines in Scotch plaid flannel, and walking the dog in a rugged field coat. So grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean, being outsider.

• 24:41Roman Mars?

  In October, we released an episode with the great Stephen Johnson, talking about his latest book, The Infernal Machine, all about how the invention of dynamite drastically changed the political landscape in the US when it became the weapon of choice by domestic terrorists. Dynamite unleashed a new kind of horrific, violent, destructive power that the world had never seen before.

• 25:02Speaker 06

  Which was people being fully blown up. Like the, the physical damage to the body. There's all this kind of newspaper reports like we were not able to identify the remains of this other person. Like if you were right on top of a dynamite explosion, you know, you were reduced to small little pieces of human flesh. And that was something that had not really happened to the human body before, and it suddenly started happening all the time.

• 25:24Roman Mars?

  Dynamite was invented by Alfred Nobel, and it made him one of the richest men in the world. But it took a death in the family and a case of mistaken identity for him to truly understand what the public really thought of him. Author Stephen Johnson talked me through this amazing story.

• 25:42Speaker 06

  His brother died and a couple of French newspapers got confused and thought that Nobel himself had died. So he was put in the somewhat unusual position of getting to read his own obituaries in the paper and they were not positive. And the kind of the famous headline was, "The Merchant of Death is Dead."

• 26:04Roman Mars?

  Yeah, and it gets worse because the first line of his obituary reads, "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday", which is a real gut punch.

• 26:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, you hate to read that if you're still alive.

• 26:26Speaker 06

  And so, you know, this whole career that he'd spent, you know, unleashing this explosive force on the world designed to help it modernize and build railroads and skyscrapers and subways and sewer systems, all of which had happened and which had made him like one of the wealthiest people in the world. At his, you know, alleged death, what was remembered was that he had unleashed all this terrible catastrophic violence on the world, thanks to the political radicals who had stolen his technology and put it to nefarious uses.

• 26:56Roman Mars?

  But that is definitely not how he is remembered today because of one person.

• 27:01Speaker 06

  And so Nobel had developed before this point, a long enduring friendship with a peace activist named Bertha von Sutner. And she had argued to him that he should use his prodigious fortune in the service of the peace cause that was kind of on the rise at that point. And something in the accidental reading of his obituaries and the recognition that his legacy was likely to be very tarnished and his long conversation with Sutner led him to change his will and take the vast majority of his fortune to endow now the thing that is actually most associated with Nobel's name, not dynamite, but the Nobel Prizes.

• 27:43Speaker 06

  And most famously, the Peace Prize, which was a very unusual. It was one thing to have a kind of a scientific prize, a Nobel Prize in Physics and Chemistry seemed to make sense and particularly made sense with something like Chemistry where Nobel had been a pioneer in Chemistry himself. But the idea of a Peace Prize was a very unusual thing. And it is now arguably like the most prestigious prize that one can receive in the world. And von Sutter actually was one of the early recipients of it. So part of her, her legacy was advocating for peace and also advocating for Nobel to create the Peace Prize, which then became a force for good in the world in many ways and enduring to this day.

• 28:22Roman Mars?

  Stephen Johnson's most recent book is called The Infernal Machine. I loved it. You're gonna love it. It's dynamite, as are his other 13 books about science, technology and innovation, even though the others are not actually about dynamite. Only this one is, but they're all dynamite nonetheless.

• 28:41Roman Mars?

  So Joe Rosenberg, what do you have for me today?

• 28:44Speaker 07

  Well, Roman, this story starts just a couple of months ago when I'm at home and I'm walking around barefoot and I go into my roommate's room to ask her about something. And before I can even get a word in, she just blurts out, oh my God, what the hell is wrong with your feet? And I look down at my feet, I look up again, and I say, what do you mean? Because she sounded truly alarmed, at which point she goes, your big toe is shorter than your second toe. Yeah, and it's true. My, my, my big toe is slightly shorter than my second toe. But genuinely, before this moment, it had never once occurred to me to think about

• 29:24Speaker 07

  the lengths of people's big toes relative to their other toes, much less my own.

• 29:30Roman Mars?

  You know, now that you mention it, my second toe is also longer than my big toe. But if you were to tell me to draw a foot, I think I would draw them in sort of a, a kind of straight diagonal progression from big toe to little toe.

• 29:41Speaker 07

  Oh, okay. So your, your big toe is also shorter than your second toe.

• 29:46Roman Mars?

  That's right. That's right. I'm, I'm one, I'm one of you.

• 29:48Speaker 07

  Oh, okay. Well, this is, okay. Well, then in fact, this story is gonna have, um, suddenly the stakes just got a lot higher.

• 29:55Roman Mars?

  Okay.

• 29:56Speaker 07

  So, most feet, you know, yeah, they form more or less that kind of diagonal line with the big toe being biggest. And my feet, and apparently your feet, do not. At least in my case, the end of my foot instead just kind of forms this gentle curve. But my roommate was just adamant about this, that the length of my big toes, or specifically their lack of length, was just plain wrong.

• 30:22Roman Mars?

  And so, how did you take this in, like emotionally?

• 30:25Speaker 07

  Externally, with grace.

• 30:27Roman Mars?

  Okay.

• 30:28Speaker 07

  Internally, I am freaking out. I already have other things about my body that I'm not pleased with, and so I do the only thing I can do at that moment, which is to rush back to my room, go on my computer, and look up what it means when your big toe is abnormally short.

• 30:41Roman Mars?

  Well, what did you find? I mean, what did the internet tell you? Not that I put a ton of credence on the internet when it comes to like, what thing is going on with my body, but still, what did the internet tell you?

• 30:51Speaker 07

  Well, in this case, you should put total credence in the internet, because I found total vindication.

• 30:56Roman Mars?

  Oh, excellent.

• 30:57Speaker 07

  Yeah, it turns out that this is a thing in the art world, because in the Western artistic tradition, throughout its long history of depicting the human form, there are three major foot shapes that you'll see come up. And they are Egyptian, Roman, and Greek.

• 31:14Roman Mars?

  And so I'm assuming that's because this is how the Egyptian, Romans, and Greek, like sculptors and painters each portrayed feet?

• 31:21Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 31:22Roman Mars?

  Okay.

• 31:22Speaker 07

  But also, each of these three categories corresponds to types of feet commonly found worldwide. And broadly speaking, an Egyptian foot is when your big toe is longer than your other toes. And that is far and away, as mentioned, you know, the most common type of foot worldwide. In one study, it's something like 70% of the global population.

• 31:43Roman Mars?

  Okay.

• 31:44Speaker 07

  Then there is the slightly rarer Roman foot, that is when your big toe is the same length as your second toe and often third toe. And that's like 25% of people. And then, there is what you and I have, the Greek foot, which is when your big toe is shorter than your second toe. And the Greek foot is the rarest foot of all. In this same study, only 5% of people have it.

• 32:08Roman Mars?

  Wow, I would have never thought such a thing. So, given that it's so rare, what determines whether or not you have a Greek foot?

• 32:16Speaker 07

  It's a little unclear. You'll be shocked to learn that toe length is not a top priority in the medical community right now. And to be clear, there's no definitive study of the numbers. They can vary quite a bit. But it pops up more in a few populations throughout the world. So according to, again, different studies, maybe like 30% of the Ndoma in Nigeria have it. Possibly a majority of people with Ainu ancestry in northern Japan have it as well. But the important part for you and me is that according to no less a source than Wikipedia, my foot, my much maligned and ridiculed foot with its short big toe, was not only depicted, but treasured by the ancient Greeks who believed, and I kid you not, that

• 33:00Speaker 07

  it was the platonically ideal form of the human foot.

• 33:03Roman Mars?

  Right. Well, take that unnamed roommate. That'll show her making fun of Joe Rosenberg's feet.

• 33:10Speaker 07

  That's right. And I'm obviously, I'm not going to disclose her name. I'd hate to, you know, humiliate her in front of our audience of millions. Yeah. But it gets better because it says that throughout most of Western artistic history, it was, quote, "an idealized form which has persisted as an aesthetic standard."

• 33:27Roman Mars?

  So like you and I have won like the foot lottery. The Western canon has determined that we have beautiful, beautiful feet.

• 33:35Speaker 07

  We do. And I need to insert a brief PSA here, which is that in the medical world, there's actually a name for it. It's called Morton's toe. And it can lead to gait issues that lead to leg and back pain later on in life. So, you know, if you feel like you have an extreme version of this, maybe go check it out with your doctor. But that is not relevant to what we're discussing today. We're gonna, we're gonna move on to the more important stuff here.

• 33:59Roman Mars?

  Okay, so how did that aesthetic ideal come about? Like, how did the Greek foot initially become considered this, you know, the, the quote unquote, persistent aesthetic standard?

• 34:09Speaker 07

  Well, perhaps not surprisingly, something like 40% of Greeks have it and possibly, yeah, like a majority of Greek men.

• 34:15Roman Mars?

  So the ancient Greeks just looked down on their feet and just decided, oh, this toe configuration is the best.

• 34:21Speaker 07

  Obviously, right. And if you think back to your high school history class, you might remember that when classical Greek culture came about, the Greek philosophers and artists were just obsessed with the idea that you could find the ideal form of every little thing.

• 34:37Roman Mars?

  Right. The Greeks thought they could deduce this idealized form of the perfect tree. The platonic ideal is what I was taught.

• 34:44Speaker 07

  Yes, exactly. And there was actually a famous Greek sculptor, Polykleidos, who apparently laid out the perfect proportions of a human male body in a treatise. And sadly, all the exact measurements from this treatise are lost to history. But one thing that Polykleidos and the other Greek artists believed was that the big toe absolutely had to be shorter than the second toe.

• 35:08Roman Mars?

  And how much shorter are we talking here?

• 35:10Speaker 07

  Admittedly, it's a little unclear. And it's also honestly not clear what their rationale was, besides the fact that so many Greek people had it. Every article I've found on this likes to say it might have been due to the golden ratio. But what exactly toe length has to do with the golden ratio, no one ever bothers to explain.

• 35:28Roman Mars?

  As soon as the golden ratio was brought into something, I'm like, okay, this is a bunch of nonsense.

• 35:32Speaker 07

  Yeah. Nevertheless, the Greeks end up having a disproportionate cultural impact. And so there's basically been like 2,500 years of Western art in which the depiction of the human form has been influenced by the Greeks. And so when it comes to the great works of Western art, our toes, Roman, are in very good company. Needless to say, I prepared a small slideshow. Let me start you off with what is arguably the most admired and well-preserved ancient Greek bronze of all time. It's called Boxer at Rest, in which this very handsome guy, who I personally think kind of looks like Paul Meskell, sits in this kind of beautiful, exhausted repose.

• 36:15Roman Mars?

  Okay, let me click on this one. Okay. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's nice.

• 36:18Speaker 07

  And here is a detail, of course, of one of his perfect Greek feet with its slightly smaller big toe.

• 36:26Roman Mars?

  Yeah, this is very subtle, but I can see this is a lovely, idealized foot.

• 36:30Speaker 07

  Absolutely. And lest you think this is restricted to men, let's move on to Renaissance painting with no less than Botticelli's Birth of Venus.

• 36:39Roman Mars?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:40Speaker 07

  Venus, I will remind you, is the goddess of Roman beauty.

• 36:44Speaker 07

  And here are her even more pronounced Greek feet.

• 36:47Roman Mars?

  Oh goodness, yeah, they really are leaning in hard. It looks like a finger almost.

• 36:51Speaker 07

  Yeah. And the list of Greek feet goes on. You know, Leonardo's drawings of the ideal human form, you know, the one in the circle.

• 36:59Roman Mars?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:00Speaker 07

  Michelangelo's David, and my personal favorite example of Greek feet, the Statue of Liberty.

• 37:05Roman Mars?

  Oh, wow, yeah. I've never noticed this before. Is that like the biggest, short, big toe on display in the world?

• 37:13Speaker 07

  It might be. I, you know, I, there's, there's, there's only a few challengers and I, I probably should check them out.

• 37:18Roman Mars?

  I've never looked at her feet before. Like, not only is the, you know, second toe quite long, the pinky toe is weirdly far back. It looks bizarre.

• 37:30Speaker 07

  Yeah, no, it's, it is truly bizarre looking. I personally think that my Greek feet are better than her Greek feet. And I should add, I, I think we also might actually make great foot models if we ever needed the extra cash. Because I can't confirm this, but a quick Google search for foot-related products like sandals suggests that a disproportionate number of foot models also have Greek feet. So I, I think the modeling agencies might need to give us a call.

• 37:56Roman Mars?

  Yeah, I think that makes total sense to me. You know, this is opening up a dark doorway.

• 38:00Speaker 07

  Yeah. I mean, do you know about WikiFeet, Roman?

• 38:02Roman Mars?

  I do. I mean, I heard that name before, but I've never dared to look. I do know that at one point, I, I posted a picture on Instagram of a piece of art in my house. And we, we don't wear shoes in my house. And so my feet were on display. And my stepdaughter texted, "You put your feet on the internet?" And I was like, "What?" So I'm aware of this, but I have not opened that door. Like, this is not a subculture. I'm, I'm like, going to explore it greatly, I don't think.

• 38:35Speaker 07

  Well, but at least you know now that you have truly beautiful feet.

• 38:40Roman Mars?

  Well, you have beautiful feet too, Joe.

• 38:42Speaker 07

  Oh, my God, well, thank you, Roman. Yeah, don't hate us because we're beautiful.

• 38:46Roman Mars?

  Don't hate us because we're beautiful. Thank you so much, Joe. This was fun.

• 38:49Speaker 07

  This was a lot of fun, Roman. Thanks.

• 38:55Roman Mars?

  99% Invisible was produced this week by Chris Berube, Vivien Le, Jacob Medina Gleason, and Joe Rosenberg. Edited by Christopher Johnson. Mix by Martin Gonzalez. Music by Swan Real. Fact checking by Laura Bowens. Kathy Tu is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is the digital director. Delaney Hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Emmett Fitzgerald, Gabriela Gladney, LaShma Dawn, Nina Potuck, Kelly Prime, Jason DeLeón, and me, Roman Mars. Taylor Cedric is our intern. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stephen Lawrence. We are part of the Stitcher and SiriusXM Podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora Building in beautiful uptown Oakland, California. You can find us on Blue Sky, which is definitely the best mass social media site that anyone can hang out on.

• 39:39Roman Mars?

  We're gonna make a go of it there, so give it a try. Or you can connect with us on our Discord server, where there's over 5,000 people talking about the power broker, talking about architecture, talking about a bunch of other stuff. There's a link to that, as well as every past episode of [email protected].

• 40:01Speaker 03

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