99% Invisible - 350- The Roman Mars Mazda Virus

Episode Date: April 17, 2019

Gimlet’s Reply All orchestrated a grand podcast crossover event to try to solve a years old bug plaguing 99% Invisible listeners that drive certain models of Mazda. You can find all the fake podcast episodes and feeds on the Reply All website. Reply All is a fantastic show! If you don’t know it, you'll love it. Start listening now. Find the link to the Mazda-safe podcast feed here: The Roman Mars Mazda Virus

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. On the last episode, I promise you the greatest podcast crossover event in history. And here it is. From Gimlett, this is reply-all. I'm Alex Goldman. And I'm PJ Vot. And this week PJ, we have a Super Tech Support. A Super Tech Support is a segment on our show where listeners come to us with their weird, unsolvable tech problems. And one of us usually you goes out and tries to solve it for them. Mm-hmm.

And you have one. I do. Tell me about it. So we got an email from a guy named Ben. He lives in Houston. And Ben is a huge fan of podcasts. He has his own podcast. He said he listens to over 100 podcasts, which like,

I don't even know how that's possible. He said that though one complaint he has about his podcast app is that it tallies how much time he spends listening to podcasts. It tells me how many overall days of podcasts I've listened to and it's just more and more depressing. You know, would you like to guess? Sure, yes. All right, 40 days. 133.

Oh my god. And recently he started having this very strange podcast-related problem, which is what? he started having this very strange podcast related problem, which is what. So Ben, not too long ago, got a new car. It was a 2016 Mazda 6. And the thing that he was most excited about in his new car was that he could pair his phone using Bluetooth so that he could listen to podcasts. Oh, before he was like an oxen guy.

Yes. Anyway, for some reason, the radio in his new car refuses to play one podcast and one podcast only, which is the radio to be a podcast 99% visible. Really? Yes. And it's driving him absolutely insane. His car Bluetooth has rejected Roman Mars and his stories. Yes. Obviously, like for people who don't know, 90% visible, host rejected Roman Mars in his stories.

Yes, obviously for people who don't know, 9% visible, host to better Roman Mars. It's this really great non-fiction podcast. They tell all these stories about design, like how things work in the world and why they're made the way they're made, like the stories behind those things. And apparently it is the one podcast

that doesn't work on his car. That's right. So I asked Ben to play 99% visible through his car stereo while he was on the phone with me. Can you tell me exactly where you're sitting at the moment? Alright, I'm sitting at my driver's seat in my 2016 Mazda 6. Okay. Um, and... Let me know when you press play.

Alright, so... I'm gonna press play right now. This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. The show does start playing, but like the display screen stops working, it totally freezes, the buttons aren't working properly. He has no control, it's just for playing on his own.

A little of all of ours. The whole of oner is displayed. So he can't interact with the screen at all. It still says whatever I played right before 99% invisible. And then after about a minute, the screen just went blind. And now it's cut off and restarted. And I'm not playing 99% invisible anymore because every time I've done that, if it's still playing, it will freeze again. How could you have a tight problem where the trigger was like content?

I know, it's weird, right? It's very weird. It's like, it would make more sense to me if like, it broke down anytime you tried to listen like, podcasts that weren't, if it didn't work for car talk. I'd be like, okay, maybe his car doesn't want to hear stories about sick cars.

Maybe that's like upsetting or something like that. I really like that you've immediately gone be like, okay, maybe his car doesn't want to hear stories about sick cars. Maybe that's like upsetting or something like that. I really like that you've immediately gone to like the cars with chief sedges. Do you have any theories about what's going on? I don't know. My best guess is that because I looked at the file sizes and I listen to things like hardcore history and blank check which have big file sizes. And it's not that, my best guess is maybe he's using some sort of weird audio codec that interact strangely with my system, but I really couldn't tell you.

So I don't know. Ben thinks that because Roma's voice is so like warm and close in his podcasts, maybe he's doing something specific and technical to the files to achieve that? That would be my actual guess. It's like there's something about the actual kind of file. The way that Roman is converting his podcast to an MP3, that's just like too complicated for Ben's car system. And I was thinking about it and I was like,

these are the two constants in his problem. One is the podcast, it's always the same podcast. And the other is that it's always the same radio. I was like, maybe just that's like a bad radio. But even if it's a bad radio, it's still interesting because like why is this radio bad only with their numbers invisible? Not only that, but we got another email

from another person experiencing exactly the same problem with exactly the same podcast. That is so weird. Um, all right, so I have to figure this out. Okay, cool. Hello. How you doing? I'm good. How you doing? I'm good. It is a pleasure to hear your voice, not on the podcast. Yes. Yeah, I'm me as well. I was very delighted to get your email. Are you totally in the darkest of why I would reach out to you? Totally. So I told Roman why I was calling him.

And I told him about what was going on with Ben's car. There's one that causes his car stereo to freeze, shut down, and restart. And Roman had actually heard about this problem from other listeners. Yeah, I don't know what it is. We got some details for it a few times from a few different people, but I've never really figured it out. All Roman knows is that in some cars, Bluetooth plus car radio plus 99% invisible causes everything to break, but he has no idea why.

So I ran Ben's theory by him. He's like, well, Roman obviously cares about the sort of texture of the sound. Maybe he's doing something very specific to his files. And I'm curious like, what is your setup like? Do you have a strange microphone of some kind? No, I mean, we have a couple, I use like a shotgun mic in the studio. But you're not using some kind of special encoding settings that are different from the rest of radiotopia. No. No. Roman said that he had a theory that he's actually pretty confident about, which is the thing that makes his podcast unusual is that it uses the percent sign.

The percent sign, as in the percent sign, 99% invisible? Yeah. Oh. He was like, it must just not play well with the stereo for some reason. So it's like, because the stereo can also display the name of the podcast, there's something about just there being a symbol where it doesn't expect there to be a symbol where it breaks.

Yeah. And it really bums Roman out honestly. He's been hearing about it for years from other people who are not been, but like what can you do about it? He's not going to change the name of the podcast. You know, like, I would love it to be fixed, and I really, if somebody's a fan on the show,

I really hate for them not to be able to hear it. Like, I wish it could be better, but I think I recognize the futility of me fighting it, I think, is the thing. I feel like a primary fundamental tenet super tech support is realizing that something is futile and well outside of our capability and putting on a football helmet and running headfirst into it anyway.

Well, I mean, if you solve it, I would be really grateful. It's just like when it just seemed like there's this is one of those things where all these technologies are budding up against each other. where all these technologies are budding up against each other. And I am, is some little bit of grit that gets caught between the gears of, you know, tech companies, you know, not knowing how to pass things off and talk to each other. That's what I feel like I am. The irony of this was crazy making. 99% visible. A podcast dedicated to explaining the beauty of good design, that is the one podcast that breaks when you try and play it on Ben's Masta. It just felt like an imbalance in the universe that I had to correct. And Roman's theory about the percent sign, it felt really plausible to me, so I thought

I'd start there. And I figured like, if the percent sign is given the car trouble because it's a special character, other special characters should break the car too, so I just wanted to test that theory. Basically you're thinking like classic tech support problem, like you have to replicate the glitch to understand it, to solve it. Exactly. So I started thinking about other special characters, like, you know, what about like the carrot,

or the curly brackets, or whatever. The curly brackets? You know, the curly brackets. Oh, yeah, yeah. Next to the P. Yeah, they look like they'd be music notation. Okay. So we wanted to make a podcast that would break hysteria. And to do that, we devised a test.

Uh-huh. who's we? Me? Most of the team to be honest. Okay. It was me, Tim, Anna, Fia, Emanuel, Shruthi, Domiano. I was about to make funny you guys because I was like, oh, why does it take that many people to make a podcast?

It was like literally because I made people to make this podcast. So why wouldn't it? Also, we didn't make one podcast. How many podcasts did you make? Well, let's just start at the beginning. Okay. So the first podcast we made is called

Carrot Space Carrot. You know the carrot, which is the little pointy upwards arrow. Yeah. Okay, it's called Carrot Space Carrot. Whose job was it to make the podcast art? I was mine. Okay. That was pretty nice. It's like a child's drawing of like a bug's called carrot space carrot. Mm-hmm. Who's job was it to make the podcast art? I was mine. Okay. That's pretty nice. It's like a child's drawing of like a bug's bunny carrot and then in the background

There's a planet. Oh, I get it. It's like carrots and space. I'm just gonna play it for you. Okay God we are in Alex Coleman territory. That's synth. Hello, welcome to the Carrot Space Carrot. Pops. Pops. Pops. I recorded this in my attic. I feel like this is the ASMR that like, printers listen to when they're trying to go to sleep the night.

The atomic red carrot has slimeless... ...the travel forward. Three times. You're describing what? The atomic red carrot? I hate times produces darkest corrupted or queen-hands-lakes. Don't you just feel like relaxed? No, I don't feel relaxed. How do you feel?

I feel like a robot's trying to mug me. Like a robot's trying to hypnotize me to go to sleep so it can mug my data. Queen-hands-lakes. A niolates. Negative. Queen-hands-lakes. I think I've had enough this fight. Okay.

I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to hypnotize me to go to sleep so it can mug my data. Queen Anne's lace. A Nile Anne's. Negative. Queen Anne's lace. I think I've had enough of this podcast. Okay. So, we made this podcast. We uploaded it to podcast apps and to an RSS feed. Uh-huh.

We gave it to Ben. Uh-huh. And I asked him to try it in his car. Go ahead and listen. And we'll see if it breaks your car stereo. Alright, let's do it. And play. Hello. I'm the Kyrgyz speaker. Can you look at your screen and see how this is affecting your stereo.

So I have to tell you, it is functioning completely normally. Interesting. It also means it's not filtering for the quality of podcasts. So then we wanted to make a podcast to test the less than symbol, the tilde, which is the symbol that means approximately, and the greater than symbol. Okay. I'm just going to play you the beginning.

Okay. That's John T. Hi, this is Samine Nasrat. Welcome to greater than less than approximately. You got Samine Nasrat to make your big podcast? Yes. Jesus. Samine wrote the book Salt Fat Asset Heat

and she also has a Netflix show by the same name. Such always sound and. Ha ha ha ha ha. Today I'm joined by a cooking newp, Alex Goldman. Hey, thanks for having me. Oh, I'm so glad you could be here. You got her to teach you cooking? I've been trying to learn cooking for a book for like a year.

A berry clefote is basically a pancake with berries in it, but instead of being cooked on the stove, it's cooked in the oven. Okay. Do you feel like you're not with me today? I feel very excited for a Mazda. What you have to understand about this is this isn't your average cooking show, because the only way that you could give me instructions is by telling me the ingredients were less than approximately or greater than 8th.

I hate my heart. It's just such waste. Less than approximately or greater than some other thing. So let me find an example here. The measurement for the sugar should be about, do you ever had one of those toys that you know, those stress balls? Uh, yes. Okay, you should put about a stress ball amount of sugar into the bowl.

So you're saying like greater than one of those super balls? This is great. Yes, greater than a super ball. So, just a black thing on the top. Okay. Okay. For the eggs, can you add an amount of eggs that's greater than the number of nipples you have?

So you're saying like less than the sides of a square. Correct. Anyway, the very clef who T I made as you might imagine didn't turn out good. Was not edible. Yeah. So did this break the Mazda? He popped it in his podcast player. Alright. Hi, this is Samine Nostrat? He popped it in his podcast player. All right.

Hi, this is Samine Nostrat. Welcome to greater than less than approximately. It seems to be working just fine. Okay. So at this point, we have tried the carrot, the tilde, the less than sign, the greater than sign. We even made another podcast where we tested the plus sign, the equal sign, the curly brackets, none of them are replicating this problem. Have you ever had the thing happen where you go to get like an object repaired and the people in the repair shop

care about the object differently than you care about it? Do you know what I mean? Like they're like, oh, what this guitar really needs is like to be a double neck guitar. And you're like, no, it doesn't. But then they're just like doing it and they're often doing it. You know what I was like to have more of a relationship

to the work they want to do than to helping you. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, I mean either okay But of course at this point we were definitely gonna test the percent sign right right so I would argue you could have just started by testing the percent sign some wood some wood argue You seem to just want to make a bunch of garbage podcasts. How dare you call these garbage? So we made a podcast that was called 100% Related. Hi, my name is Alex Goldman and you're listening to 100% Related? The premise of this is a couple days ago I was talking to our editor Tim Howard and he insisted that I was only 50% Related to my dad because I only have 50% of my dad's genes.

Hello. Father. So you're 50% related to your dad and you're 50% related to your mom? I'm 100. My opinion is I'm 100% related to both of my parents. But in Tim's worldview. Yes. And so what we did is we got my dad who, a former judge,

to adjudicate this argument. What should I call you? Should I call you Judge Goldman? Or should I call you... I call you... Mark. Mark. Okay, he seems very biased in this, but whatever.

Now, I'd like for you to lay out your case to him because what you're saying is insane. Well, it really just seems to me that if you were 100% related, you would be Mark. And you are not. You're 50% related. So, okay. What all are that?

What all are that? I'm 100% related to anyone who's my relative. So you are as related to your father as any other human being. That's what you're saying. Being Tim are on the same page. Spoiler alert, so was my dad. Oh Tim, was your dad took Tim's side?

Yes. Good man. So, why is this the podcast? I like, because I like arguing with you. It's like for fans of arguing with you. Yeah. Oh, I don't feel good. So, the percent sign we love. Oh right, there's a point this.

There's a point to this. He listened to the thing. I feel like I've fallen into your vortex. So clearly we were wrong about all the special characters breaking the radio which surprised me, but I just wanted to confirm the one thing that we were actually confident was true, which was that the percent sign would break the radio. So I give Ben the podcast. All right, let's do it. All right.

So I give Ben the podcast. Alright, let's do it. Alright. Hello. I have to know, is it freezing your... Stereo. Alex, I'm really sorry to say. No. It is totally normal.

But how is that... How is that possible? So clearly, this caught me off guard. So Roman's whole theory that you found so obvious does not seem to be found it. It doesn't seem to be found it. And so at this point, I just start thinking that it has to be something within the file itself

that they are uploading that's busted, that it doesn't actually have anything to do with the percent sign. Interesting. But then Ben tells us something that, again, bufffuttles us. Okay. Which is Ben found a copy of a 99% visible episode on YouTube and tried playing that over his car stereo.

So he was like, I'm gonna see if Pirated 99 PI works? Yeah. And it breaks the car. It breaks the car? I mean, it breaks the stereo. It does the same thing. Yeah. Which is weird because it just means like,

it's not actually anything about the file itself because when someone's uploading a podcast to YouTube, that's like a totally new file. Yes. It's like the content. It's like the car is sentient and doesn't like Roman Mars. And so Ben was like, the only option is that

there must be some sonic frequency that is breaking the car. And I was like, there's like a note in Roman's voice that if you were just sitting in a Mazda and started talking to you loud, the car would just explode. That's wild. Also when I was a kid,

there's a rumor that there was one note that would make you poop your pants. Oh, yeah, the brown note. Yeah, I'm very familiar. Is that, that's not real. I don't think it's, we both know that's not real. But I don't read about it though, it's not real, but I'm glad you brought it up.

Okay, I've been thinking about it this whole time. I could hear you think about it. I've been thinking about it this whole time. I could hear you think about it. I've been thinking about it since this story began. And I've been like, I'm in mixed company, I can't bring this up. I can't really do stuff yourself from saying something one time. Do you think Roman would think about it?

Do you think everybody was thinking about it the whole time? Brown note? Yeah, I hope so. Okay. So we're like, okay, we have no idea. We're like totally back to square one. You got to find the brown note. Oh boy. Oh boy. And the other reason this doesn't make any sense is because Roman has another podcast about Trump and the Constitutional

law. Yeah, it's called what Trump can teach us about con law. And what happens without it? It plays a fine. Romans voice doesn't break the radio on that podcast only when it's 99% visible. Huh. So what happened? You called John Mazda. We call the company that makes the radio.

We call Benz Mazda dealer. We are specifically dealing with a Mazda tech problem from a person who's in your service area and I was wondering if I could ask you a question or two about it. They weren't familiar with the issue. So we called Andrew Cooke-Louitts, the CTO of PRX, the public radio exchange. Hello, this is Andrew. Hi, Andrew, this is Alex Goldman. How you doing? Oh, hey, Alex, how are you?

I'm good. He's in charge of how the show gets uploaded to podcast apps and our SS feeds. So you're just calling everybody being like, have you heard of this? Yeah. And Andrew said that he'd heard of it and that he'd always figured like Roman that it was the percent sign, but I told him about the test that we'd done. And all of them worked, including 100% related. No. Oh yeah.

Crap. That's... Oh, he's like so painful, these kind of bugs. No one knew what was going on. And then... I want to solve this ahead of you. So did Ben. He actually got back in touch with us and said, hey, I've been running some tests on my own.

I tried uploading a couple podcasts. And what I found is that it's not the percent sign alone that is causing this issue. It is the percent sign followed by an uppercase I that shuts down the radio. Lowercase I, it doesn't? uppercase I, it shuts down. That's all we know. We don't know why.

uppercase I, your card doesn't fly. Lowercase I, podcast in the sky. You's all we know. We don't know why. Uppercase i, your card doesn't fly. Lowercase i podcast in the sky. You're a great guy. That's exactly right. So, I mean, I, so we're getting closer. And then you know our pal Kurt Melby who works again. Works again, what works again. I play Fortnite with most weekends. Who does coding at the office?

Yeah. He had an idea. Kurt. Alex. Thank you for coming into the studio today., he had an idea. Kurt. Alex. Thank you for coming into the studio today. Thank you, glad to be here. So the reason that we have you here is because you're the person who actually uploaded the podcasts that we made.

Yeah, that was fun. I don't know if you know this, but none of them worked. I listened to them also, and they were pretty entertaining. But yeah, I know I'm not surprised that that didn't work. All right, smart guy. Kurt says I have a theory. And the theory is that in the programming language C, uh-huh.

Oh, I know what it is. I know what happened. Literally 99% means something. It means turn off your stereo in the programming language, see. You're close, but not exactly. In the programming language, see, basically in some scenarios, the percent sign means, hey, the character immediately following me,

the character immediately following the percent sign, think about that like code rather than like text. And start parsing that as though it's asking you to run commands. And there's a thing called printf in C that's like used very, very commonly and heavily. Another language is to copy this feature to interpolate is the technical term interpolate the number into the string. And he said percent i in c is a command, whereas percent r, which would be 100% related, question mark, is not. So like, what's the command?

What is percent i tell a computer to do? So I have it up here. It has to do with, basically, the percent in c has to do with displaying integers, NC, I know, this is very confusing. Oh, my brain's mad at that. Yeah, I know. So, percent and then a bunch of different letters tell it to display integers in a certain way.

But basically what's happening, it sounds like, is the car stereo, it gets what it thinks is an audio file, what is an audio file, what is an audio file, and it's like, okay, this part of the information I have is just for the humans. This is like the title to display. Yeah, 99, and then there's, and then it's like, okay, now here's some stuff for you, the robots to understand.

And it gets a bunch of gobbling guck and it gets confused and it shuts down. Yes. Wow. So there's a bunch of different commands and see that would cause this to happen. Okay. And so, we were like, okay, if Kurt's right, we should be able to test this with other

commands and those should also mess up the car stereo. And so, we made one more podcast. I don't know. Okay. With another one of the recognized pieces of syntax, which is the letter P, which when it follows the percent sign becomes the pointer address, whatever that means. Okay, but whatever, as long as it's going to code,

it should shut down the stereo, and that's what's happening. So we made a podcast that's called 88% parentheticals. Uh-huh. Here you go. This is Sarah Canig. And you're listening to 80% parentheticals. So wrong. I'm going to tell you about this document I'd been waiting for.

It was one piece of paper that was going to change everything I thought I understood it now. It arrived on a Monday. Monday began like a normal day. I was walking to work with my dog, his name is Bruno by the way. He didn't come with that name. I named him Bruno.

He's a rescue dog. He came with the name like Bradley or something, which I really didn't like. So I changed it to Bruno, which by the way is the name I also wanted to name my son, but my head. We're in a parenthetical, I understand. I understand what you've done.

With Bruno. And we get there. It's a short walk, like maybe 10 minutes, which is crazy because people are always like, what podcast do you listen to, what podcast do you listen to because you make podcasts and I'm like, not that many because I have such a short walk to work. Anyway, I get to my-

I just was just wrong. Okay, I've heard enough. Okay, I don't want to live in a world where you can take up star-cating time with this. Also, there's like people that are like, oh, when's the next season of serial coming out? Like 20 minutes later than it would have. So what happened? Well, we sent it to Ben and it didn't break the car stereo. What? It didn't break it. So that screws up the whole theory. Absolutely. I mean, we didn't just try percent P.

We tried a bunch of different things that should have broken the car stereo in the same way that percent I does. And none of them caused a problem. So what then is Kurt's theory bunk? Kurt's theory appears not to work. The only combination that did anything was percent followed by an uppercase I. Okay, but we don't know why. No, we don't. And it is driving me nuts.

And this is the point in the story where Andrew Ku Klowitz comes to the rescue. Andrew Ku Klowitz? Remember, he's the CTO at Public Radio Exchange, the company that distributes 99% visible. Uh-huh. He really dove. Like, he really invested himself in this. What does that mean they really invested himself in it? Well, you know, we were trying to figure out a way

to diagnose this properly without actually having access to the code. And you've done everything you could. You made a bunch of nonsense podcasts for no reason. Did you talk to somebody who worked at a Mazda dealership and one guy at work? We also called Mazda. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Uh-huh. a Mazda dealership and one guy at work. We also called Mazda. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha one of the original authors of the original code, which he then gave to us. The author of the code for the Moss Carstereo program?

Yes. Wow. His name is Brandon Goosman. And is it embarrassing that I don't know, that I didn't already know that you can look in code and see the code's author? Like I didn't know that. There's a way to write your authorship in your code, and it's been done forever.

And is it always like that, like a signature on a painting? It's a little, a lot of times it's harder to find, you have to have access to the code to see the authorship. Yeah. And my favorite story about this is early in the development of Atari games, Atari would not allow the author of the game to put their name on it. Because they're just being a company about it?

Yeah, and so the author of the game adventure created this incredibly arcane set of things that you had to do in the game so that you would find a secret room that just flashed his name in the center of the screen. That's brilliant, AnSAD. It's like it's just sad that they had to go to that much work to just be like, I made this. Anyway, so you got in touch with Brandon.

Yes, he works on exercise technology now. I work for a company called Shapelog. We develop connected strength products. As a person who's terrible at exercising, I'm not your target audience. Yeah, the irony is the entire office of us working on this are not either. We're more like, stay up late and sit at our computer longer

people. So we told Brandon what was going on with Ben's car and he told us that he was pretty sure he knew what was going on. Which is. So what he said was... One thing that got my eye immediately is that there's a percent symbol in the name and that has some special meanings in things like a URL. Right. In a URL, certain characters are allowed and certain characters are not. So our operating theory was that percent I was breaking the radio because the

percent sign followed by the letter I meant something in the programming language C. But what Brandon told us was no, that program wasn't even written in C. It was written in a totally different programming language C. But what Brandon told us was, no, that program wasn't even written in C. It was written in a totally different programming language. Okay. And to the radio, the percent I doesn't actually mean anything. And what Brandon thinks the problem is, is that the code should tell the radio to ignore things that it doesn't understand or that don't mean anything. But in this case, for whatever reason, it's not.

So the radio sees percent I and just keeps desperately trying to figure out what it means. So it's like it's having a panic attack. Kind of. It's like I percent, percent I, percent I, percent I, percent I. And so then I was like, okay, so why is the stereo restarting? And Brandon told me that when they designed the car, they made it so that the radio was regularly sending a little message to the rest of the car saying, I'm working, I'm working, I'm working. Brandon called it a heartbeat. The hardware layer is listening for that. As long as it gets it, it's happy. If it doesn't

get it, it will assume that the UI has frozen and it will restart it to a known good state. It's saying it's not communicating with me. Something is wrong and it just starts over. So if it freezes up, then it doesn't send the hard beat. It is trained to automatically shut down and start back up. So that is why the computer is that's why it has a panic attack and then it takes an app and it wakes up and tries again. I really like how much effort we've put into

personifying these cars. I just understand that they're sentient. I feel like this doesn't actually go against my original theory. Like everybody else, they freak out when they don't have the right answer. Right. There is one other thing that was suggested to us several times along the way.

Ben's car stereo firmware is a few other versions of it. So the theory is that if you updated the firmware, it might fix this problem. According to Masa, it will. But Ben looked into getting his firmware updated, and it was just too expensive for him. However, that doesn't mean that we don't have a more permanent solution for Ben and Roman. Because Andrew Cook-Louis from PRX had a very sweet idea.

Maybe we got to publish a version of 99% invisible with some slightly different titles or something. I'd be willing to create the Mazda version of the feed. That would be great. That would be super cool. There's just like a 99% invisible for Ben and other Mazda owners feed. Well, I can say that people in Nissan

have also reported having this problem, but yes, for Mazda owners and Nissan owners who are having problems with the specific infotainment system. That is a very niche podcast. So I called Ben up one more time. Just let me know if uh if uh when you got it set up and ready to roll. Well dude this is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Wars. Tim Hartford is a master at picking out the perfect little story.

And everything's working fine? Economic principles. Yep, so this totally works. It's plain normally, not freezing at all. It's perfect. We'll have a link to the Mazda Safe 99PI feed on our website. After the break, we'll feature three full episodes of the fake podcasts from this story. I think that they played the full episodes. It would have disrupted their story too much, but they are gems. And I really want to play them for you. After this. And now, 88% parentheticals 100% related and greater than, less than, approximately,

in their entirety. This is Sarah Canig, and you're listening to 88% parentheticals. I'm going to tell you about this document I'd been waiting for. This one piece of paper that was going to change everything I thought I understood up to now. It arrived on a Monday. Monday began like a normal day. I was walking to work with my dog, his name is Bruno by the way. He didn't come with that name.

I named him Bruno. He's a rescue dog. He came with a name like Bradley or something, which I really didn't like. So I changed it to Bruno, which by the way is the name I also wanted to name my son, but my husband nicks that. Anyway, I'm walking to work with Bruno and we get there. It's a short walk, like maybe 10 minutes, which is crazy because people are always like, what podcast you listen to, what podcast you listen to because you make podcasts. And I'm like, not many, because I have such a short walk to work. Anyway, so I like reach to unlock the door

and I notice that at the bottom of the door there is this envelope with just my name on it, no return address, which I hate that. Why do people not put, I mean, I understand if you need to be anonymous, but just generally, like I always teach my kids, like put your return address on the envelope in case it gets lost.

Anyway, and one time I did get this crazy anonymous letter, which is a whole other story I can tell you about another time. Anyway, so I open this envelope with just my name on it, and inside is a single document, which I'll tell you about next time. This episode of 88% parentheticals was produced by a manual Jochi. Our editor is Tim Howard, music in case you're wondering about the music, is by the mysterious breakmaster cylinder. You can check us out online or so I've been told I've never checked myself.

On iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Hi, my name is Alex Golden and you're listening to 100% related? A podcast about family. Alright, let's start the show. Hello. Father. Son. Hello, I'm recording you right now in the interest of full disclosure. All right, you have my permission. Thank you.

I'm in the studio with Tim Howard, our editor. Hi. How are you? Tim, how you doing? Doing wonderful. Thank you. What should I call you? Should I call you Judge Goldman or should I call you?

I call you. I call you. I call you. Mark, all right. Good to meet you, Mark. What should I call you? You should call me Judge or should I call you coming mark mark alright good to meet mark what should I call you you should call me just both but i love it so we are actually calling upon you in your capacity as a judge we we're having a disagreement and uh... we would like you to hear both sides and adjudicate if that's possible

alright we'll go first is the plaintiff uh... that's it i'd say that team is the plaintiff i you're the one with the complaint, Tim? Tim came to me yesterday with a bold proposition that I profoundly disagreed with and I want to, yeah, okay, so I'll just tell you what it was. It's just simply that for some reason, Alex and I, I don't even know how we got on the topic,

but I argue to Alex that he and you are 50% related. And I said that we are 100% related. Now, I'd like for you to lay out your case, Tim, because what you're saying is insane. Well, it really just seems to me that if you were 100% related, you would be Mark. And you are not. You're 50% related. So, okay. What I'm saying is like, when you're related to someone, you're 100% related to the regardless of how many genes you share.

Look, I have like a second cousin twice removed, you know, who like my aunt's grandson, my cousin's kid. Uh huh. I'm still 100% related to that person. I'm 100% related to anyone who's my relative. So you are as related to your father as any other human being. That's what you're saying.

That you cannot be more related or less related to anybody well this feels like a like more like a less like a math argument and more like a semantic argument i mean i don't know but you i'm just i'm just following your your your logic here my logic is you can have a closer relationship to someone in that also higher percentage objection judge objection a picture of the argument uh... that all you got

what are you talking about it's makes perfect sense what i'm saying no but we're not done with the idea that you just said that you can be called more closely related but it's not a percentage no no what is it an on off okay But is that a percentage no no what is it on off okay all right let me let me let me let me ask a question okay so I did a genetic testing right about four or five years ago this doesn't sound good for me one of the big companies and you know about once every three or four months I get this notice from the company that says we have found more relatives of yours.

And these relatives of mine that are finding have like less than 1% of my genetic makeup. But this company, which is 23 and me, still consider these people to be relatives. Although I've never heard their name, I don't know who they are, but you know, they'll say point 0.65% genetic identity. All right. So here's the question. And I as related to them as I'm related to you. fuck you! You get arrested at that point in court, don't you? Yeah, it's contempt of court. Contempt of court. I'm going to go for my whole life. I'm going to go for it.

Alright, well thank you so much Mark. Thanks Dad. Alright, Jim, I enjoyed it Alex. Mike is always talking. Yeah, same to you. I'll talk to you later. All right, take care. Bye. Bye-bye.

Thanks for listening to 100% Related. You heard today from me, Alex Goldman, Tim Howard, and my dad, Mark Goldman. The show was produced by a manual Jochi. Our theme song is by the mysterious breakmasterman. The show was produced by a manual Hi, this is Samine Nasrat. Welcome to greater than or less than approximately. Today I'm joined by a cooking newbie, Alex Goldman. Hey, thanks for having me. Oh, I'm so glad you could be here. We're going to make a berry klafuti. What is a berry klafuti?

A berry klafuti is basically a pancake with berries in it, but instead of being cooked on the stove, it's cooked in the oven. Okay. Do you feel like you can do that with me today? I feel very excited to try. Okay, are you in your kitchen? I am in my kitchen. I've got that much down.

Okay, good. That's the right room to be in. All right. Let's make sure you have all of your ingredients. We need milk. Do you have milk? Got it. Okay, good.

Do you have sugar? Yes. And eggs? Yes. Vanilla. We need some salt. I have salt. And then you need some flour. Mm-hmm, got it.

And do you have any berries around? I have some blueberries. Oh, perfect. Blueberries are great. Okay. Okay, the first step to making this is that we need to turn on the oven. So you have to heat your oven to a temperature that's a little bit less than the number of days in a year. Okay.

So we're talking like the number of degrees in a circle roughly approximately, maybe a little bit less than that. Okay. All right. Okay. And then you have to imagine that you're going to bake this pancake in a dish. It could be any shape. It could be round or rectangular or like ovular, I guess would be a word. But it needs to be approximately the size of like a small pan pizza. Okay, let me take a look. Hold on. Okay, I think I've got it.

Okay, great. So we're gonna need to measure out some milk. And basically, I want you to put the amount of milk that is like approximately, you know, like, like a small jar of mayonnaise, amount of milk. So like, smaller than a full ketchup bottle. Definitely less than a full ketchup bottle. Definitely less than a full ketchup bottle. Like a bottle of ketchup that has been used generously at your house.

And then we're going to put some sugar. The measurement for the sugar should be about, do you have you ever had one of those toys that you know those stress balls? Uh, yes. Okay, you should put about a stress ball amount of sugar into the bowl. So you're saying like greater than one of those super balls? Yes, greater than a super ball, but less than a soft ball. Okay. Okay. For the eggs, can you add an amount of eggs that's greater than the number of nipples you have?

First of all, it's very presumptuous of you to know how many nipples I have. Second of all, so you're saying like, less than the sides of a square. Correct. All right. Man, I feel like I was born to bake. I'm really good at this.

I mean, it looks really good. For vanilla, we're going to put last time the number of lights on a traffic light amount of glugs into the bowl. You got it. OK. I put some glugs in there. OK, great.

I want you to put more than twice the amount of planets in the solar system of grains of salt into the bowl. You got it. Done. Okay, when it comes to the flour, yeah. How big is your big child, Harvey?

He is, I don't know how big he is. Is he bigger than like three basketball stacked up? Yes. All right, I basically I want to imagine the size of Harvey's foot. Okay. And could you do a little more flour than the size of Harvey's foot into the bowl?

A little more flour than the size of Harvey's foot. Now what you're gonna have to do is use your whisk to blend everything until it's really smooth and frothy. All right, it is looking pretty frothy. Okay, great. Now you're gonna pour enough batter to create a layer that's a little bit thicker than a piece of cardboard into the bottom of the dish. So it would be approximately two pieces of matzo stacked on top of each other?

That sounds right, approximately that. Oh my god, I'm so excited. Does it smell good in vanilla? Yes, it'm so excited. Does it smell good in vanilla? Yes, it does. Awesome. So I want you to turn one of the burners of your stove on until the flame is a little bit greater than a lighter, like a zippo lighter.

Oh, okay. And then set the dish on top of there. You're gonna leave the dish on there for a little bit less than the time it takes to brush your teeth. And what you're looking for is that the batter begins to set in the bottom of the dish. You got it, you got it, all right, here we go.

So once it's set, you can pull it off the burner. Uh-huh. And now you're gonna add the berries. Okay. Now we're gonna add another stress ball amount of sugar over the berries. Okay. And now you get to top it all off with the rest of the batter. Just sort of drizzle it all over.

Okay. Now you can just throw it into the oven. For how long? It's gonna be in there for about half as long as a movie. So approximately as long as an episode of bones. Yes, I would say it's greater than the length of an episode of bones without the commercials and the length

of an episode of bones with the commercials. Somewhere in there. Oh, okay. God, I really miss bones. Noted. All right, it's in there. It's in there. It's in there.

Alex, are you gonna, who are you gonna eat this Klafu tea with? I'm probably gonna eat it with my wife and kids, which I'm super excited about, because my son loves dessert more than anything in the world. And your children, approximately how old are they? Harvey is older than a wheel of Parmesan?

I don't know how old wheels of Parmesan are. A wheel of Parmesan is about as old as... It's a little bit less than the length of a typical American presidency one term. Oh no he's yeah he's greater than a wheel of Parmesan. on. Has it been approximately the number of minutes in a bones episode? Yes. I'm going to take the clef Uti. I'm going to show you what it looks like.

It's literally just came out of the oven. Okay. I can't wait to see it. In its state now, I would say that it approximately looks like your local skate park. You know how there's like sort of like hills and valleys that are sort of oddly placed in order to maximize like grinding and jumping and leaping. That's I think what it looks like right now. The rising and the falling is a natural part of the process, so you've done that part, right?

I think you've done a great job. I'm really excited for what you've made. It's not a clafootie. It's closer to like a souffle pancake or a Dutch baby pancake. But unfortunately, it does look like it's less brown than the like golden deliciousness that I had hoped for. But I still think it will be delicious delicious and I think you should taste it. All right. I wish I were there. It's delicious. It's like eggy kind of.

Yeah, I feel like it's a success. All right. Simeon, thank you so much for having me on your show. I am so pleased that you were able to join me today, Alex. Oh my God. I feel greater than I did on the day I graduated high school. Oh, I feel greater than the day you graduated from high school, too. The show is hosted by Mee, Simeon Nasrat.

It's produced by Anna Foley, and our music is by Breakmaster Syllinder. Thanks so much for listening! These three podcasts and all the other podcasts that reply all made to test the Roman Mars Mazda Bug are available in your favorite podcast app, just search for them, or on the reply all website, which is linked in the show notes. Reply All is hosted by PJ Boat and Alex Goldman. I could not be a bigger fan of their show. Go listen to it. It is great. Produced by Shruti Panamanini, Via Benin, Damiano Marquetti, Anna Foley, Jessica Young, and a manual Jochi. Tim Howard is the editor mixing by Rick Kwan and Kate Balinsky, fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Their intern is Christina Ayelae DeJosa. Special thanks to Khalilaholt, Jim Fisher, Sidney Memeleus, Peter Olephant, Eli Manning, and Kurt Melby. And from my end, I'd like to give a special shout-out to Andrew Cook-Louitts, the CTO of

PRX who created all those 99 PI dummy feeds for Alex and Benda Test. As evidenced here, Andrew always works above and beyond the call of duty. The reply all theme song is by the mysterious Break Master cylinder. The closing song is Simplicity by Macroform. Only Matt Lieber once, but he was very nice and very, very tall. 99% of his was a project of KALW 91.7 in San Francisco and produced on Radio Row in beautiful downtown Oakland, California. We are a member of Radio Topia from PRX, a fiercely independent collective of the most innovative

shows in all of podcasting. Find them all at radtopia.fm. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars and the show at 99PI Orc. We're on Instagram, Tumblr, and Reddit too. But we have links to 99PI and articles of interest feeds that do not break any car stereos at 99pi.org Radio Tapio from PRX.