99% Invisible - 333- Mini-Stories: Volume 5

Episode Date: December 19, 2018

It’s the end of 2018 and time for our annual Mini-stories episodes. These are my favorite episodes of the year to make. Mini-stories are fun, quick hit stories that don’t quite warrant a full episode and two months of hard reporting, but they’re great 99pi stories nonetheless. This week we have stories of 60s cult TV shows, semi-useless gadgets, woo woo miracles cures, and a modern Christmas tradition. Mini-Stories: Volume 5 Support Radiotopia today!

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. It's the end of the year in time for our annual mini stories episodes. Mini stories are these fun, quick hit stories that maybe came up in our research for another episode or they're just some cool thing that someone told us about. It could be from a friend, someone on Twitter, a relative, Avery's dad, some story that we found really interesting, but it didn't quite warrant a full episode in two months of hard reporting, but there are great 99PI stories nonetheless.

And my favorite part is we do them as unscripted interviews where I'm in the studio, but the people who work on this show, who I like a lot. This is the greatest team in all the podcast land. I guarantee you that. This week we have stories about 60s called TV shows, semi-useless gadgets, woo-woo miracle cures, in a modern Christmas tradition. It's gonna be fun. Up first is Avery Trollfun. Okay.

Okay. What do you got? I have for you my oldest article of clothing. I am interested. Yeah. I've worn this my whole life. You can feel. I can feel it soft.

It is a soft gray t-shirt. I've been wearing that weirdo shirt since I was like three. So clearly my parents gave it to me. I mean, I definitely remember it went down to your knees. Well, why you took it, I don't know, or maybe I get it, I don't know. I don't think I had the agency to take it. I bet you put it on me.

The shirt is 25 years old. I don't really, at least 25 years old. This is my dad, the giver of this shirt to me. So I read what it's on it? Yes, read what's on it. Okay. Where am I in the village? What do you want?

Information. Who side do you want? That would be telling. We want information. Information. Information. You won't get it. By hooker by crook, we will.

We will. Sorry, I have to scroll down. It's scroll down to the shirt. It's a real life. Okay, here we go. Okay, get serious. I'll give my serious voice on. Who are you?

The new number two. Who is number one? You are number six. I am not a number. I am a free man. I am not a number. I am a free man. I am not a number. I am a free man. I know what this is. What is it, Roman?

This is a t-shirt from the prisoner. And my dad's going to help us explain what the prisoner is. The prisoner was an extraordinary television series made, I think, in 1966. And it was during the 60s when you had the whole James Bond secret agent, you know, saying. So the prisoner is a 1960s TV show about a British spy, played by Patrick McGuin, who mysteriously resigns and then that evening is abducted and he finds himself in this mysterious place called the village. The village is this odd little town. He doesn't know where it is, he doesn't know what it is, that it's just a very strange little

place. So the village, like it's very disorienting because it seems to be kind of removed from all other countries in the world. There are like castles and villas and townhouses and they're all smashed together and it could be absolutely anywhere and it's completely beautiful and perfect, but like too perfect. Everything is relentlessly cheerful. And everybody has to, you know, good afternoon. We're having a parade.

So there are all kinds of mandatory parades and events and festivals and no one has names and everyone goes by a number. And again and again, the spy, now known only as number six, has no idea who imprisoned him in this relentlessly cherry place where the people are wearing peppy striped shirts and suits with white piping and they're wearing rainbow capes and kegg sneakers. But the greeting from everybody is be seeing you. Be seeing you which on one hand sounds very inoculated see you later meant was not see you later, it means that we're watching you. Come one, come one, see you. So the whole village is under constant surveillance

all the time. And in every episode, the members of the village are trying to break number six, and they put him through elaborate mind games and challenges and temptations, trying to figure out why he resigned. And the spy can't leave the village, or a giant weather balloon will come after him and smother him.

And the show only lasted like 17 episodes or so and it was really crazy. James Bond meets Dr. Who. On acid. Yeah. The show gets weirder and weirder with each progressing episode, right? Yes, it eventually sort of went off the rails.

Did everybody just went crazy? So the very last episode doesn't make any logical sense. It's completely crazy. But at the beginning of this bonkers absurdist crazy episode was something that my dad found truly shocking. At the beginning of the opening very last episode, they reveal the location of the village in real life. And just like, oh my God, this place really exists.

What the hell is this place? So the village looks like a set, but it's a real place. And for my whole life, as long as I have been wearing that weird shirt, my dad has wanted to go there. And this year, he finally did. You know, it's in a remote corner of Wales It wasn't easy to get there. Wow. Here's the backstory After World War one there's this Welsh architect name sir Bertram Clough Williams Ellis

And he was kind of dismayed by how the UK was rebuilding after after World War one and all these gorgeous old buildings were the UK was rebuilding after World War I, and all these gorgeous old buildings were getting torn down, or they just weren't bothering to rebuild in the beautiful classical style. They were building big brutalist concrete blocks. And so when he acquired this remote plot of land in 1925 in his home country of Wales, he decided to bring the beauty of the whole of Europe back to his homeland, literally.

And as Ellis would travel around the world, he'd find a colonate or a building or a church, or maybe the top two floors of a church, dismantle it, ship it to Port Myron, but every British person that I've heard calls it Port Marion. And from 1925 to 1975, Cloth William Ellis, Williams Ellis hunted for all these crumbling remains of castles and houses and villas across the continent, especially the Mediterranean, and rescued them by bringing them to this one spot. And to kind of fund it, it became a resort. I've never seen anything like it because usually when you think of fund it, it became a resort. I've never seen anything like it because usually when you think of hotel, it's a building. But this is 35 buildings in an isolated area. And each building, I mean,

besides, you know, the restaurants and the support thing, it's a, it's a, it's a thing that was like a miniature Disneyland. Except unlike Disneyland, everything's actually real. Right. Like it's all actually old architecture. But apparently, I mean, here I have these books that you can look at pictures of it. These are my dads, my dad's literature. But it still looks quite Disney-esque

because it's all painted, these bright colors. Yeah, it really does. I mean, I would have never thought it was real from what I've seen of it. Yeah. That's crazy. It's almost like, why would you go to the effort of doing it for real? When it looks so fake. But it does remind me that when we look at old architecture, we expect to see the weathering of it. And if you really do restore it, it is bright and shiny and odd and brightly colored and

pink and bright yellows and things like that. But like clock Williams Ellis kind of took it a step further because he added, he like added stuff. He put in fake windows that weren't really there. He'd like paint them on. And he added stairways that didn't go anywhere just because he thought they looked scenic and added these windy paths. So he also kind of like turned it into this 2D fruity playground of actual.

And the cool thing was it was postmodernism before postmodernism. Yeah, totally. Like it looks like a lot of styles that we would recognize now, where they're smashing, you know, colonnades on villas, on gothic clock towers and painting it all bright colors. And so in a weird way, like it must have looked extra crazy in the 60s when no one was doing that. Oh, totally. Although, you know, maybe without having gone through postmodernism, you would just see it as this weird collage, whereas we might now have the language of Disney and cheesy postmodernism

to apply to this thing. Like maybe it looks cheap to us because of our lived experience of these things, but it might have just felt opulent and amazing to somebody before post-modernism existed. Funny, you say that. Architecture Critics Lewis Mufford wrote in 1964, Port Marion is a gay, deliberately irresponsible reaction against the dull sterilities of so much that passes as modern architecture today. So it was like shocking. No one had seen anything like it.

And you Frank Lloyd, right, went to visit it. Gregory Pack came to visit. Ingrid Bergman came to visit. Brian Epstein from the Beatles would stay there. Oh. George Harrison stayed there. A lot of British celebrities and stuff would go there because it was so isolated and it was so beautiful.

And they treated everybody with a sense of discretion. So it was this place that was kind of separate from the rest of the world and removed from time and context where your name didn't matter. Basically all the stuff that made it unbearable for number six. I was there for the Prisoner Appreciation Society weekend. So you had people walking around. Prisoner costumes and they were reenacting episodes. My dad was there for this thing called Port Maricon, which is basically like a giant cosplay event for the prisoner where everyone they do parades and they pretend to abduct people and there's a giant balloon floating around. Everyone's wearing striped capes and cats except

my dad. You know, it was a little... A little much. It was a little too much. I enjoyed the spectacle. I wasn't up for the lifestyle. Still, it was kind of cool because this is my dad's favorite show. He loves this show. And so for him, it was kind of visiting an old friend.

Because like they tried to remake the prisoner kind of recently. They tried to do an American version of it. It was terrible. It was terrible. I don't know what else to say. It was just terrible. Because my dad says it just can't work without the main star and visionary, Patrick McGuin. He's the one who made it weird. But it also couldn't work without Port Marion. I think if the prisoner were done in like a star trek thing, it wouldn't have worked. What made it so incongruous that you were in this natural environment in these beautiful old buildings. That's what I think made it even more horrifying because it was

so pleasant and it was so cute and it was so charming and it was so analog. And so that's the cool thing about the prisoner, and Port Marion itself. It's not trying to be just a tribute to the past or a vision of the future. It's just kind of this like a malgum-mated alternative reality. But in a weird way, in both cases, with Port Marion and the prisoner, they just turned into alternate realities that look like what we have today, which is, you know, postmodernism and Disneyland, and also this like world of constant surveillance and constant cheeriness. It shows that the sort of fantastic nightmare that Maguyn was predicting in some cases is certainly now technologically possible. And that's totally why I still wear the shirt, also because it's soft.

It is very soft. That's awesome. Thank you, Afrey. Thanks. You're seeing you. It is very soft. That's awesome. Thank you, Afrey. Thanks. You're seeing you. You're seeing you. Up next, this is producer Vivian Lee. So I'm just remembering right now that the first time you appeared on this show was last years mini stories before you were a staff member at Nine-Ein-Pi. Yeah, it's my 99 P.I.

That's so nice. This is so great. I'm so happy you're here. And so, what is your mini story as a staff member? Okay. So, I'm going to start this with another question. Okay. So, you travel a lot, right?

I do travel a lot. And you travel a lot, right? I do travel a lot. And you travel with devices, right? Yes. Okay. So have you ever been on the road and one of your batteries runs out of power? Absolutely. The one on the phone, it's like 5 or 6 p.m. consistently. That's the way it is.

Right. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's the rule. It has to run out of battery. Yes. But how useful would it be if I told you that there was an AC-free battery-powered battery charger that would let you fully charge that one battery and all it needs are 12 batteries of the same type to recharge that one dead battery.

Well, that doesn't sound very useful. That sounds a little wasteful. Yes. It's not useful. But at the same time, it's not entirely unuseless. That's true. It's not entirely, I could still use that thing, that monstrosity that you are describing. Right, so the AC free battery-powered battery charger is something that actually exists.

Wow. And it's one example of something called Chindogu, which is the art of designing nearly useless gadgets. Wow. Okay. So what do you mean exactly by nearly useless? So a chindogu is a very specific type of invention that sets out to solve one particular problem. But it actually ends up causing so much more of an inconvenience that it's almost entirely useless. Right. So in the case of the battery-powered battery charger, you'd technically solve your problem

of having one dead battery, but you'd make a much larger problem by draining 12 other batteries. To power it. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So it comes from the Japanese word chin, meaning weird or strange, and dogu meaning tool. So, strange tool. Oh, that's awesome. Okay, so do you have another example? There are literally thousands of them. There's a pair of high heels with training wheels attached to the heels. If you're just learning how to walk in high heels, you have a little bit of a little carrier right there. There's a Zen Kittie litter box, so you can practice the art of sand raking while you're

cleaning up cat crap. But do you want to know what my favorite chindogo is? I absolutely need to know what your favorite chindogu is? I absolutely need to know where your favorite chindogu is. A solar powered flashlight. So you technically could use it, but you wouldn't really actually use it. Yeah, you couldn't possibly use it. So where do these ideas come from?

And does anyone actually make them are they just ideas? OK, so you could probably tell by the name, but it started in Japan with a man named Kenji Kawakami. Meet Kenji Kawakami, Japan's famous inventor of the useful and absurd his creations range from umbrellas for shoes to hair splash guards to chop sticks with fans. So Kawakami studied aeronautical engineering in college and he's always been interested in engineering and design and he came up with the concept

and started making his own creations sometime in the 1980s. But somehow he actually ended up in publishing, which is kind of how Chindogu took off. So what kind of publishing was he doing? Was he publishing these items? No, no. So in the early 90s, he was the editor of a Japanese catalog called Male Order Life, which is one of those

home shopping magazines. Right, right. And so there was this one month when he realized there were some spare blank pages in the back. So instead of just leaving them blank, he decided to include some images of these unuselless inventions that he'd been tinkering around in his workshop with.

So, you know, they weren't for sale or anything, but, you know, he thought it'd be just kind of a fun joke to slip in. So he had the solar-powered flashlight, which I mentioned earlier, and also a pair of iDrop glasses, which are essentially a pair of glasses with funnels over the lenses. So you could just put iDrop's in and they'll funnel directly into your eyeballs, like a little hole, so you could just drip right in. Right. And, you know, the readers ended up getting such a kick out of them that, you know, he started putting chindogu's in every issue after that.

Right. And so after a few years of doing this, this American journalist and translator named Dan Papia came across it. And he was like, I have to spread this to the rest of the world. And so the two of them together founded the International Chindogu Society and established the Ten Tenants of Chindogu. And so these have rules.

So what are some of the tenants to make it a truly, a true Chindogu? Okay, so the first rule is that a chindoku has to be almost completely useless. So if you've created something that's actually useful, you failed. You're done. The second rule is that it has to actually exist. So you have to actually build a chindoku. Oh, good. So I was actually wondering this.

So you can't just make this hypothetical, even like a picture in a mail or a catalog. You actually have to make the thing. Yeah, yeah, it has to be. That's great. It has to be birthed into the world. I like that rule. Yes. Cool.

And so the third rule is actually my favorite. It says, inherent in every chandogu is the spirit of anarchy. And then it goes on to say, they represent freedom of thought and action. The freedom to challenge the suffocating historical dominance of conservative utility. So I think I'm getting, so like a little bit of this is an exercise in rebellion for the

Uber designed product that is perfect, that does its job with great efficiency. And it's like, it frees you to have weirdo inventions that don't that function but don't actually function well. Yes. So yeah, we tend to marry utility and design. Right. And they don't have to be. That is totally true. I don't have to be. Yeah, and I mean, it seems a little strange to use absurdist design as a form of anarchy. But before Kawakami got into publishing, he was actually a radical activist in the 60s and 70s. And so the spirit of non-conformity and anti-consumerism is something that's rooted in the concept of chindogu. There's actually a couple other tenants that dictate you can't sell the invention for money, and you also can't patent it because it belongs to everybody.

So chindogas are supposed to be like embodiment of design without the restrictive thread of materialism. And you can tell by the way that he talks about it, like as silly as it kind of appears, he intended them to be fun, like a fun way to change the world. I believe that if everybody shares my idea of changing perceptions, it says the world could change one invention at a time. And so what happened to Chindogu as a movement? What, you know, these big, lofty ideas? Right, right.

You know, it did spread internationally. There are Chindogu societies and competitions all over the world. But Colcomi actually ended up putting a bunch of books out with unuseless inventions that he's made over the years or that people have submitted into the Chindogu society. But since one of the tenants is that you can't make money from Chindogu, he actually ended up donating a lot of the money to charity.

Oh, that's so nice. Yeah, and I. And I. Yeah, no, he's a good guy. But I actually have one of his books here. Oh, cool. That was published originally in 1995. And I, he's a good guy. But I actually have one of his books here that was published originally in 1995. And can you tell me what you see here?

It is a camera on a long stick with a plunger to force the shutter of the camera. This is a selfie stick. That is a selfie stick from 1995. It's called a self-portrait camera stick. Do it yourself without a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... you, confusing if they don't speak your language, even costly if the third party regards your camera as a gift. With a 57 centimeter telescoping pole, your dilemma is over. Expanding to three times its length for a full shot of you, your companion, and your environs, your only problem will be that all your shots will capture you and the act of holding a pole.

This is going to come to you in some future of your photo album unless you really like poles. And it's a full on selfie stick. That's amazing. This was and this was 10 years before the patent for the selfie stick came out. Wow. Yeah. So I don't know if Kawakami failed at making a chandogu or if we failed a society because people are still using selfie sticks. I think we failed a society. Thank you, Vivian. That's great. Thank you. So I'm in the studio with Emmett the Cheryl producer here at 99% of visible. How are you doing? Good.

How are you running? I. How are you running? I'm good. So what is your mini story today? All right. So my mini story is about blue glass. Oh. And specifically, it's about this strange period in the mid to late 19th century.

When people thought that blue glass or the light passing through a blue pane of glass could solve just about any problem You could possibly have and this all goes back to a civil war general general Augustus J. Pleasanton was a Soldier in the civil war and he was a gentleman scientist. He did a lot of reading So this is Jenny Benjamin and she's the curator of the Museum of Vision in San Francisco. Cool, cool place, check it out. And she has looked into this guy general Pleasantin,

and she says that he was kind of this armchair scientist really shooting from the hip. And he had all kinds of wacky scientific theories, but one of them had to do with blue light. And he reasoned that the blue color of the sky, there must be some inherent value to that color. And that blue light was part of like what facilitated the growth of plants and animals

and in biological processes. So he built Pleasanton, that is built a garden nursery in his backyard with alternating blue planes of glass and he ran a quote experiment to see how well the vegetables would grow. So this is like a greenhouse? Yes, like a green, but I didn't want to use the term greenhouse because it was a blue house. And when she says quote experiment, what is she saying? She's

saying, you know, this isn't exactly the most scientific gentleman scientist. But, you know, basically, he was growing grapes inside of this glass house with a certain amount of the windows tinted blue. And, you know, you can kind of imagine what happens next in the story, right? I think so. Pleasanton reports, of course, that his plants grew to incredible size. So then he expanded the experiment, and he created an animal pan. I believe it was for pigs. And he claimed the pigs grew to enormous size, and it was all because of the blue light.

That's so great. Yeah, right. It's the breakthrough of the century. Exactly. And so, you know, words starts to get out about these experiments and he actually starts giving talks kind of around around the country, extoling, you know, the virtues of blue light. He even got a patent or he applied for a patent for what he called his serulean process, which

I love that. And that's a really amazing name. And you know, a court, this is according to him, but he says the patent officer came to his farm. And this is what he supposedly said, if my investigation should establish the variety of your statements, you have made the most important discovery of this century transcending and importance even that of Morse's telegraph, which at best furnished only a means of communication with distant places while your discovery could be brought home to every living object on the planet.

Your patent would be one of the most valuable ever issued in the United States. Wow, that's my tentative praise. Yeah, right, exactly. And he gets the patent. And then he goes on to write a book about this, about how blue light that it's a panacea. And it was touted as a cure all, right? Everything from skin conditions to your eyesight. Also, baldness, insomnia, back pain, more serious diseases.

He basically was saying, you know, this can do everything. And the book was really popular. Like, it's a lot of gobbies. And it had all these testimonials in it, people saying, oh, this like made my pig giant or this like cured my paraplegic child or whatever. And so... For about two years, like 1876 and 1877, there was suddenly this huge fad for all things blue.

Their blue eyeglasses, she showed me a pair of blue eyeglasses from this period at the Museum of Vision. There was blue wallpaper, but the big thing was blue windows. Me too. So people would build like little sun porches and put one blue glass window, you know, thinking that, you know, if you could spend time bathing in the blue light, that that would hear whatever failed you.

And this has become known as the blue glass craze. And so when did the blue glass craze come crashing down when people realized it didn't work at all? Yeah, yeah, quickly. It lasted a couple years. And the whole time that it was going on, there were people that were kind of poking fun. The same way, happens now when people believe

in pseudoscientific things, there were editorials written about these idiots, installing blue glass all through their houses. But the real nail in the coffin was this, you know, scientific American. I mean, it speaks to how widespread it was that scientific American took it upon themselves to like thoroughly debunk it in their pages. So there was a really long article just debunking every aspect of this science. And you know, just to be perfectly clear about this.

There is no way that color by itself or colored light is going to cure your eye disease or any disease. Go see your doctor. So are there any of these blue windows left out in the world? Yeah, I asked Jenny that. Are there like remnants of this era that you can see today like windows and buildings anywhere? That is a really good question. I don't know if there are any buildings with blue windows specifically because of this, but I bet it somewhere I would not be surprised

we could go Chase some down probably If we were to find this mythical house with its window pane it would probably just one blue window Please tell me you found it. Well, okay, so one of the most comprehensive pieces we're writing about this era was by the writer Paul Collins Oh, he's so great. He's like one of my favorites. He's a really good historical writer. Yeah, totally. And he wrote a chapter about Augustus Pleasanton in one of his books. And in the chapter, he talks about himself finding a window,

a blue glass window, when he was living in San Francisco. And so I called him up to talk about that. Yeah, I just was looking at houses that I walked along and there was this one with sort of a front or like, perler type of area that had blue glass panes in it. You know, he's not 100% sure that this is from that era. For all I know, that might have just been like

some hippie in 1970 that decided that would be a cool thing. But the age of the house was such that it was like the right era for that to have been an original bit of that fat. In the book he talks about how it's between these two gas stations on this one street in sort of the sunset in San Francisco. And so I did some like Google Street View sleuthing. Okay. And so here check it out. So here is the house. And you can see, yeah, these two pains here. I see. And he thinks that this little entryway on the house is one of these sort of sun porches. That's awesome. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

And you can tell, you know, it's like, it's like a kind of older looking house on the block. It is, yeah, no, it's a Victorian, and it looks like it could be from that era. Right. For sure. And so, you know, I decided to go check it out. Oh awesome.

One between the shell station and the chevron. Check it out. Oh awesome. One between the shell station and the chevron. See what we can find. No. Oh no. It's gone. It's gone, the house is gone.

No. Oh no. So it was gone. Oh no. So it was gone. The house had been turned into like a condo. So even that picture from Google Street View is out of date. Yeah. And the crazy thing is that that was from 2017.

So I went there, I was like, really calm. I was like, oh, I'm going to find it. I'm going to like knock on the door and be like, like, hey, like, what do you think about these blue glass? Like, it makes you feel any better. Like, how healthy are you? And I get there. And I also have the blue windows has been torn down

and now there's a giant box, a huge clear window. It's really ugly. Trying to be nostalgic about architecture and buildings, but this one really looks terrible. And worst of all, the glasses clear. Yeah, clear glass. What a bummer. Yeah.

So, you know, the story, after my long search, I still have not found a blue glass window, you know, if anyone out there is. If anyone out there has it, I mean, there's got, there's certainly houses that are extant from that area. But I mean, let's know. Right, it seems plausible that someone out there

has got one of these windows we can take a look at. That would be awesome. Cool, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Up next, we'll have one more Christmas themed mini-story. You're going to want this for your Christmas party banter right after this. Our final mini-story of the day comes from senior producer Katie Mingle. You know I would make it really cozy in here Roman. It's not cozy enough this are three by five box.

It's actually like so hot in here but just roll with me. Okay, okay. What would make it cozy in here? A fire. I wouldn't recommend starting a fire in here right now, though. Okay, but what we could do, we could go to YouTube and find ourselves a Uelog. Do you want me to go YouTube right now? Yeah, I will. Okay, sure. Just a tiny bit of history, a Uelog is an old term for a certain type of fire that people would burn at Christmas with like a special log.

Oh, okay. But now often when people talk about you, a you a log, they're talking about like, um, like this. So click on that. Oh, this 10. That first one. 10 hours of crackling logs for Christmas, okay. It's, it does its job. As soon as the fire starts crackling, like it's relaxing.

Yeah. Yeah, it's nice. This idea of putting a fireplace on TV so that you could watch it as if you had a fire in your home actually goes back to 1966. Cool. And it started at this little television, local television station in New York City called WPIX. And yeah, it was kind of the brainchild of the station manager, a guy named Fred Throer.

And he, you know how people are always like looking for holiday content. Right. Like we know this from working in radio. And it was really an idea in his head that he wanted to give city dwellers uh... the luxury and the warmth of a you log fire but that didn't have fireplaces in the apartment so that's chip our curries he's he's kind of an amateur historian of this

original you all log the location for the first shoot of the you log in nineteen sixty six was crazy mansion which was the mayor's residents still is uh... at the time the mayor was john lindsey and he came from permission to come and film the law that the px their filming group and they did but there was a mishap where a spark

flew out and it damage the very expensive oriental rug. So yeah, this was like a $4,000 rug apparently and they really messed it up. But anyway, they got their footage, they put it on the air. It was a three-hour long broadcast with a loop of this fire and it would air on Christmas Eve and you'd turn on your TV to channel 11 and it started actually started with like this little kind of Christmas time, you know, special message from someone at the station. The one that I found online, it's just striking because it's

How to put this it's how to put this. It's very Jesus-forward. Let's hear it. And more than any other person in history, Jesus taught us to respect the godliness in ourselves and give it expression by doing God's work in the world. The gifts which we give this Christmas season, as symbols of God's great gift to us, will pass and be forgotten.

But the gift of hope. As God's gift. Wow. And this is a secular UHF style station, right? So it's a sort of local news station. That's amazing. Yeah. So, and then after that message they'd cut to

the fireplace which was the the governor's mansion fireplace and the camera would kind of do like a slow zoom like you'd start out seeing like the whole mantle that there were stockings on the mantle and then it in the you know that would slowly zoom in to where you were just seeing the fire. And then for the next three hours they would play Christmas music. It is classic Christmas music from the 1950s and 60s. So yeah, so it's like a lot of orchestral kind of big band stuff. Like people like the Ray Con of Singers, Fred Wearing and the Pennsylvania's

Percy Faith. Percy Faith is the King of the U-Log. There's nobody that has more songs in the program than Percy Faith. The King of the U-Log. Yeah, it's on his tombstone. I've always said that the program, if the program aired with a great video of a fireplace and a bigger soundtrack, it would have not have done very well, but it aired with a great soundtrack. Chip loves Christmas music.

At some point he mentioned his list of top 500 Christmas songs, and I was like, I didn't even know there were 500 Christmas songs little in top. Wow. Yeah. That's great. So yeah, Chip, Chip basically grew up with this ULLOG broadcast. It was a Christmas Eve tradition and Yeah, he and his family used to watch it together even though they actually had a real fireplace. We did actually watch it. We sat and we'd watch the actual program, the actual footage. Yeah, like you would kind of gather around and put it on and you'd all like stare at it. Yeah, oh yeah, we would watch it like it was a real fireplace.

You know, we actually between the two. It would be on one side of the room, the TV, with the fireplace, with the U-Log, and the other side in our family room was the real fireplace and we were probably watching the you log more than we were the real fireplace. So New Yorkers love this broadcast and eventually the station decides they need to to reshoot it because the film that they shot it on is is deteriorating and it was actually a 17-second loop. Oh my god. People could see. Totally. You can totally see a 17-second

loop. That's crazy. I know. So but you remember how like the first time they shot it they they like burned the whole in the governor's rug. Well, he did not forget. Yeah. They would not let them back at Gracie Mansion because on the mishap with the rug, how they needed, they needed an location. So yeah, he wouldn't, he wouldn't let them go back there. And somehow, and this part is kind of lost a history. Someone found a very similar looking fireplace and you'll never guess where it was. They located a very close to similar fireplace in California of all places in Palo Alto and they re-filmed it in August of 1970 during a heat wave in Northern California.

Whoa, Bay Area Zone. Palo Alto, California. Take that, New Yorker. That's awesome. And so New Yorkers have been watching our fireplace for 30 years or something. Yeah, so this Palo Alto fire became the Uelog. It aired for 20 years.

It's the classic Uelog, not to be confused with the original you'll log. The 1966 you'll log that was shot at Grace, you mentioned that air for those first four years is the original, but it's not the classic because most people don't remember those original years that it aired. Wow. So yeah, this one aired for a really long time, so. 20 years.

Yeah. But then in 1990, Christmas comes and Chip turns on his TV just like he did every year and he turns channel 11 and it just wasn't on. We were all looking forward. It was on. Luckily for me, I just had a feeling that they might not be off forever and I recorded it. So yeah, Chip had had a recording. So he he was fine but the rest of New York was just out of luck and people were mad the station got a ton of letters so why did they take it off the air after twenty years so the station got actually got a new program director the new program director came in and and said what's this

the log it's taken up too much commercial time you know take it off oh screwed heartless so so yeah so chip and a few other people actually started a the log it's taken up too much commercial time you know take it off uh... heartless so so yeah so chip and a few other people actually started a petition to get it back on the air they set up a website called bringback the log dot com but yeah but nothing seemed to persuade the station that it was worth bringing back until actually nine eleven what happened is after the terrorist attacks beddie Ellen Burlimino, who was the president

of the station at the time, felt New Yorkers needed comfort food television. They needed something to remind them of the past, something of, you know, more simple, happier days. So yeah, they put it back on, and it still runs today. It runs, I believe it's an hour on Christmas Eve and then a few hours on Christmas Day. Chip believes very strongly that the best time to watch it is Christmas Eve. And the way he talks about it, it's like spiritual for him.

It's like Christmas Eve mass. It's like a vigil, so to speak. But the cards are sent, cookies are baked, the gifts are wrapped, and now it's just time to relax and enjoy the solemnity of the moment, enjoy the peace and tranquility of Christmas before the crazy Christmas rush on Christmas day. That's nice. Yeah. Is it the same Palo Alto fire? Did they from something new? I believe they're still using that same Palo Alto fire. Yeah, so that's Chippa Curry. He runs the Bring Back the Log turned into just the

Yoolog.com and he's basically the keeper of all things Yoolog and he even helped the TV station add another hour of music to the broadcast because he has this huge Christmas record collection. And a shout out to our own Avery Treffleman who first told me about this history and to her dad who I think told her. Oh, that's so cool. Wow, that you will log. We'll hear more mini stories from the rest of the 99 PI crew as the first episode of 2019, but we will have episodes in the feed for the final two Tuesdays of 2018, even though

they land on Christmas Day and New Year's Day. I figured there's a good portion of you who are traveling and resting but still need nice things to listen to while you might have some time off work and if you don't have time off work, we'll still be here for you. So stay tuned and happy New Year! 99% Invisible is Avery Trollfumman, Katie Mingle, Kurt Colstad, the Lany Hall, Sheree Fusef, Emmett Fitzgerald, Sean Riel, Taren Mazza, Joe Rosenberg, Vivian Lee, Sophia Klatsker, and me Roman Mars. We are a project of 91.7 KALW in San Francisco and produced on Radio Row in beautiful downtown

Oakland, California. you