99% Invisible - Mini-Stories: Volume 21

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

A glowing Vegas pyramid, a famously mistyped domain, and a long-delayed miracle investigation unfold in three unexpected tales. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of 99% Invisible ad-free and a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Nearly a decade ago, I had this thought that at the end of the year, it would be nice to tell a few little stories. We call them mini stories. Many stories maybe don't rise a level of being a fully reported story, and often there's something silly or interesting that was on the producer's mind. Maybe it's an outtake from a reported episode. Maybe it's something completely new. Many stories were a way to have some fun at the end of the year, and for the staff to take a proper vacation. That was how it all started.

But over the years, many stories have become a monster. Everyone started preparing really heavily for them. They started reporting them as full stories. And suddenly, many stories were not so many. So this year, I decided unilaterally to stop mini inflation and go back to the fundamentals. All the producers are going to join me in a Zoom room together and tell me stories that I have not heard before. I am not prepared. I don't know anything about what's going to be told to me.

So let's just jump in. And first up is producer Chris Perrupe. Chris, how you doing? Roman, it is the most wonderful time of the year. Many stories. Let's do this. I like the attitude. What do you have for us?

So, Roman, I want to call back to a story we did a little bit earlier this year. It's a story that I reported about the Great American Pyramid. A new pyramid is being built, not to glorify death, but is a monument. that will celebrate life and man's indomitable spirit to create. Feel the power of the Great American Pyramid. So did you just want an excuse to play that clip again? Yeah, pretty much. That's the whole story.

That's all I got. No, I have more pyramid stuff. So, Roman, we did this story about the Great American Pyramid in Memphis, Tennessee. Of course, today, the Great American Pyramid is a Bass Pro shop. That's right. And when it opened in 1991, you know, it was supposed to be the tallest pyramid in the United States. But, Roman, did you know, shortly after the construction of the Great American Pyramid, there was an even bigger American pyramid. How much bigger are we talking?

So the Great American Pyramid was 32 stories high. I was there for the story. I was inside the building. It really feels cavernous when you're in there. Like, it's really big. And then in 1993, two years after the pyramid. opened, another pyramid opened in Las Vegas, Nevada, and it was 350 feet tall. So that was a whopping 29 feet taller than the Great American pyramid. Oh, that's so mean. That

reminds me of the sort of skyscraper wars in the early 20th century, just like just slightly taller. Yeah, it feels petty, right? It feels extremely deliberate. And I assume it was on purpose. I asked around, I talked to people, nobody could confirm that for me, but you have to assume, right? Yeah, yeah. So in your story, if I remember correctly, the city of Memphis had a problem finding a use for the pyramid after it sort of failed as a venue. It's now this woodsy mall that has a bass pro shop in it. So what are they doing with this Las Vegas pyramid? So the Vegas pyramid, it has had one use the whole time. It is home to the Luxor Casino. Oh, that's right. Much like the Memphis pyramid, it also has a hotel inside. And it has lots of

attractions for tourists. There's this big room with lots of old Titanic stuff in it. It's a really interesting building. And actually, it has one very unique pyramid feature that I'd like to draw your attention to. There are no elevators inside. We actually have inclinators that go up the side of the building at 39 degrees. So this is Billy Padavis. He's the facilities director at the Luxor pyramid. It's almost like a roller coaster as you're going up the steep incline before the drop. Rides on rail and wheels, it pulls you up the side. That is so cool. I love going up an incline plane.

I love an inclinator. That was something that came up in the Great Pyramid episode. I love the idea of it. That's right. They actually never built theirs. They just built an elevator right in the center. So this one actually has inclinators on the side. But, Roman, there is one other feature of this pyramid that is very famous.

It is very striking. So at the top of the Luxor pyramid, there is this very powerful light that beams up into the sky every night. I have shared a photo with you if you want to take a look at it. This is the beam. That is amazing looking. That is like a little scary, like an ominous black pyramid with a light coming out of it. It's kind of like Stargate, that movie Stargate. Does that predate you, Stargate? No, no, I've seen Stargate. I mean, to me, it reminds me of the opening credits of ancient aliens. Like, it's just kind of this ridiculous looking. Like, yeah, it is a black pyramid with a beam shooting straight up to like a mother ship or something. Like, that's what it

looks like. And the Luxor sky beam, it has become this fixture of the Vegas skyline because it's really hard to miss, obviously. So at full power, the beam is said to have the same luminosity as 42 billion candles being lit at the same time. And it is so powerful. Apparently, airline pilots can see the Luxor beam from California. And actually, a couple years ago, I drove into Las Vegas for a story. I was coming over this hill and then suddenly you just see the beam. That's like the first thing you see that indicates like, oh, yeah, like Vegas. Vegas is over there. We're getting really close to Vegas. It's like this incredible tool for navigation. So how does a beam like that work? Like is it just one big light bulb? Is there lots

of light bulbs? I can't sort of fathom how you get something so bright and so clear. Right. So you're correct. It is a series of very bright light bulbs that are all using xenon gas. It started out as spotlights that uses a super bright light bulb. It's a sun tracker. You know, when it gets dark outside, the light comes on. When it gets bright, it turns off. It's certainly very Las Vegas to have like a bright light that turns on every single night, whether you want it or not. You know what you mean? But it's it's so bright that you can see it from California, you said. And is that distracting? Is it, is it dangerous if you're like flying a plane or something like that? I mean, that's a great question. And as best I can tell, there have been no incidents with airline pilots, helicopters, anything like that. But there is an issue that comes with operating a light of this size. It attracts the natural world. Just like when you turn on your light at home, that moth always goes towards the light. When we turn the beam on, there's moths up there.

And then, you know, with moths, they brings predators. Bats come in and they eat. And there is an ecosystem up there. So you get insects, you get bats, you get owls. You get all kinds of birds that are drawn in by this thing. And Billy says that normally it's fine. Like they circle around the lights. Then the birds and the insects disperse when the light goes off.

And it's interesting because I first became aware of the Luxor beam because of a news story in 2019 about a very serious bug problem that came to the Las Vegas strip. Oh, no. So, Robin, I'm actually going to ask you to watch the video for a second and just give a reaction to what you're saying on screen. In Sin City, it's the insect invasion putting on a show. No one can escape. A 24-7 onslaught of grasshoppers. For many, the first impression felt downright biblical. A migrating horde of bugs so big, you could even see them from space.

Oh, my God. Yeah, it just covered like every surface of the Vegas strip for a couple of weeks. And this was 2019. So in 2019, Nevada had this very rainy winter and then it had this very mild spring. And that is the exact cocktail for a productive breeding season for the pallid-winged grasshopper. And it is notable that these grasshoppers are drawn to artificial lights. What we saw was that the urban lights in Las Vegas, sort of act as an attractant on the landscape,

drawing these insects in to what is otherwise very poor habitat, right? Parking lots in the strip of Vegas is not an interesting or attractive place for a grasshopper to be, but this light is drawing them in. So this is Dr. Elskine-Lins. She's an insect biologist who studied this giant swarm of grasshoppers. And using radar data, she says it's clear the grasshoppers were moving towards Vegas at night when all these artificial lights were on, right? So at its peak, according to Dr. Tylans, there were about 45 million grasshoppers on the Vegas strip.

I can't even imagine that number. It is a tremendous number. It's more grasshoppers than that Las Vegas gets human visitors over the course of a year. So Vegas was this magnet for grasshoppers. And in all this news coverage, there is footage of these grasshoppers swirling around in the sky beam. And Billy says, okay, yes, there were a ton of bugs. There were so many bugs. Nobody could walk around without being swarmed by bugs.

But this was not specifically the beam's fault, right? Las Vegas has lots of artificial lights. And Dr. Tylen's, she says, yes, we cannot single out the sky beam here. So is this still a problem? Was it just that season? No, Las Vegas is not still overwhelmed by grasshoppers. This was a fairly short phenomenon. So these grasshoppers don't live super long.

Most of them died off pretty fast. So the workers in Las Vegas had to clean up these giant piles of dead grasshoppers. But after seeing all this footage, like, it is hard for me not to think about the giant swarms of grasshoppers when I think about the sky beam and the Luxor pyramid, right? It was not their fault, but it is hard to get that image out of my head. Yeah, it is a haunting image. Well, thank you so much, Chris. This is fantastic. So are you going to give us, like, pyramid stories like all the time now?

You're the pyramid correspondent? I guess I could do the Transamerica pyramid next. Absolutely. That's what's next. That's what I want. I guess so. So I should note, that is actually the tallest pyramid at America. I think it's the Luxor is by volume, the biggest pyramid, Transamerica Tallis.

I don't know. You can send me to Egypt? Maybe that's the next step in all of this. We'll work on it. Thank you, Chris. Thanks, Roman. Up next, waiting patiently in our Zoom room. Actually, probably not waiting all that patiently, honestly.

She was the one complaining the most about having to sit on the rest of the Zoom with the rest of us is Vivian. What do you have for us? Roman, you asked us to keep it simple. so I am leaning out this year and I am just going to share a website that I've been fascinated with for years now, I think. So, Roman, can you do me a favor?

Go to your browser and type in G-A-I-L.com. G-A-I-L.com. Okay. And then what do you see? It says, hello and welcome to gale.comfack. This is a very simple text-based website.

It's a gray background, black type, and it has a few questions and answers. Yes. And so the whole website is maybe a page long. There's like nine questions and answers. And the first question reads, question, why isn't there any content here? Can't you at least throw up a picture of your cat for the internet to check out? And the answer is, sorry, I have a cat, but she's pretty unexciting by internet standards. As for why there is very little content here, we wanted to keep the server's attack surface as small as possible to keep it safe. Intriguing. So what are we looking at here? So although there is very little content on gale.com, this web page actually gets a ton of traffic. And that's because gale.com is a really common typo for gmail.com. Oh, that's so funny.

That totally checks out. That totally seems like an internet thing. Yeah, exactly. So according to the gale.com fact page, in the year 2020, it received a total of 5 million. 950,012 hits, which was an average of about 16,257 hits per day. So it's a pretty steady flow of people, you know, missing the M in Gmail. And I was curious. So I checked the stats for our website, 99PI.org, which you plug at the end of every single episode. And gale.com gets about three times as much traffic as us and much of that by accident too. Okay, so who actually owns gale.com? I mean, Gail does. Oh, it's as simple as that.

So who's Gail? I honestly don't know much about her, from what I could tell. Gail is a pretty private person. I haven't been able to find any interviews with her, and I've actually been trying to get in touch with her for about four years now, so I feel like I could safely say she's not interested in speaking with me. But according to the fact page, Gail received the domain name as a birthday present from her husband,

back in 1996, which was actually about eight years before Gmail even existed. And fun fact, her husband who gifted her the domain, his name is Kevin, and he is the owner of Kevin.org, which redirects you to his LinkedIn profile. He was a man ahead of his time. Oh, yeah, Kevin was living in the year 2004. So according to Gail's fact page to you, her email provider rejects around 1.2 million misaddressed emails to Gail.com a week. Whoa. So that's a whole other level of server load. In addition to the six million visits, they get all this email that is not meant for them. That is crazy. I mean, you would think that with all these accidental visits every year to gale.com, it would be kind of a valuable property. Like you could put up more than just a fact page, you know, like or even that Google itself would want to buy it just to avoid any of this confusion. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if Google has ever attempted to buy gale.com. But it does already own. a bunch of misspelled versions of Google.com.

That makes sense. Like G-O-G-O-G-G-O, yeah. That's exactly correct. Yes. They do own Google.com. They also own Gugel.com. Google with three O's. And then my personal favorite is gulge.com.

So if you type any of those into your web browser, it'll actually take you to Google. A lot of companies, like larger companies, will buy the common misspellings of their websites to prevent people from, like, doing this thing called typo squatting. Have you ever heard of that, Roman? I haven't heard of it, but I can kind of get it through context. Could you describe it a little bit more? Yeah, yeah. So it's like when a bad actor purposefully registers a similar, like a misspelling of a domain name to either like trick people and visiting their site.

They use it for fishing schemes too or they'll try to sell it back to the company for a profit. Yeah, which is clearly not what Gail is doing. She predates all of those stuff. Gail seems just perfectly content, chilling on the domain name. She says pretty adamantly in the fact page if you read it. You know, she's like, yes, I know that I can monetize this, but no, I am not interested. So thank you very much. That's awesome. Longlivegail.com.

I'm a big fan of Gail without knowing who she is personally. This is a great story, Viv, and you kept to the many parameters very, very nicely. So thank you so much. I did as little work as possible, yes. But before I go, I did want to leave you with my second favorite example of a mistyped website. So, Roman, you know the site, githob.com, right? Yes, yes. It's sort of this website for checking in and storing coding projects and stuff like that, right? Yeah, yeah. Nobody really knows what it is. So it's spelled g-I-t-h-U-B.com. But can you do me another favor? Go back to your browser and type in g-U-T-H-I-B.com. So just invert the U and the I in GitHub.

Guthip. Oh, this is a big four words that says, you spelled it wrong. Period. Yes. Awesome. That's so great. Well, thank you so much of this story, Vivian. I really had fun. Thank you, Roman.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break here, and we'll be right back with another mini-story. Okay, we are back, and in the hot seat now is producer Jason. Jason DeLeon. Hey, Jason. Hey, Jason. Hey, there, Roman Mars. So we are wrapping up 2025 here. And one of the highlights for me, at least, was the conclave. Do you remember the conclave? Not like the movie conclave, but you mean like the real conclave. I mean the spectacle of the conclave. I mean the Catholic Church conclave. Where we got the Chicago Pope. Yes, yeah, it's a Chicago Pope. Did that rock your world, Roman? I know you're a Chicago guy. Well, I thought it was delightful that he was a Chicago Pope. Because like, when you know who the Pope's favorite, you're a Chicago Pope, you know who the Pope's favorite. baseball team is. Like, I think you're entering a more, like, different world. It's so true. Like, for me, I'm a big, like, I'm a hat guy and seeing the Pope rock a white socks hat. I was like, is this dude part of NWA? Like, what is going on? That's awesome. So, anyway, I bring this up

because one of the first actions the Pope took actually really hit home for me, specifically. So I live in Rhode Island, and Pope Leo declared the first miracle of his papacy right here in my home state. Okay. I did not hear about this. So tell me about the miracle of Rhode Island. Yeah. So this miracle, it took place in Pawtucket, which is like a small city right on the border with Providence. And the story goes that on the night of January 14th, 2007, a baby boy was born with a faint pulse. So the medical team worked on him for like over an hour and they just didn't have any signs of improvement. And pretty soon, they couldn't find a heartbeat at all. So the attending doctor recited a prayer, basically this final plea to a 19th century

Spanish priest from his hometown. And right after the doctor said this prayer, the boy's heartbeat returned. His breathing was normal. And miraculously, he grew up without complications. Oh, wow. Well, that's such a scary moment, of course. I don't know if I would necessarily qualify this as a miracle. I don't know if I want to weigh in on sort of divine intervention, but I'm really happy

it turned out this way. Yes, likewise. Look, I don't want to particularly get into the miracle, not miracle of this all, but the reason I'm bringing this to the table is because I just find interesting that this happened back in 2007, like 19 years ago. So, so wait, the incident happened in 2007, but Pope Leo declared it a miracle like this year. He declared it a miracle in June of this year. Wow. Okay, so why the time gap? What was going on there? So, yeah, I called up a priest to talk about this. His name is Father Dorian Llewellyn. He's a theologian at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

And Father Dorian told me that in order to declare a miracle in the Catholic Church, you have to go through a pretty elaborate process. It's a bureaucratic, necessarily bureaucratic process. And I have to tell you a little secret, which is that Vatican bureaucracy is not the most efficient in the world. I kind of gathered that from the Conclave movie, actually. So how does this process work? Like, how does the Catholic Church define a miracle? So I should say off the top here that I'm going to focus on medical miracles kind of specifically

because me and Father Dorian mostly talked about that. And so, yeah, these medical miracles, they have to check three boxes. The first, the healing must directly follow a prayer to a holy person. The second, the healing must take place in ways that the best. informed scientific knowledge cannot account for. And the third is that the healing must be lasting. Interesting. So how is it determined whether all those three criteria happened in the Rhode Island miracle?

Yeah. So in the case of the Rhode Island miracle, the Diocese of Providence, they caught wind of this story. And the first thing they do is they get a group of people together to investigate it. So you have to look at it almost like a government commission. So you can have to meet with the people. You have to take notes. You have to take into account medical records. It's forensic in that way.

You're trying to investigate. Well, what are the facts? Tell us the facts before we start interpreting them. I mean, this almost sounds like a TV show. So, like, who is part of this investigative team? This is so exciting. Yeah, you have the Chicago Pope, which could be like a TV show. And now you have Medical Miracles, which is probably another show.

Absolutely. I bet you if I've turned on Hulu with TLC right now, that show is on there right now. 100%. I guarantee it. But anyway, this investigative team, generally, there's a bishop involved. There's a local team from the church that tries to get firsthand accounts of the event. The church also gets independent doctors to look at medical records, and they basically try to figure out if there's some scientific explanation for what happened. And if the group determines that there's still something that can't quite be explained, then it goes higher up the chain.

How high up the chain are we talking like goes to the Vatican? It goes to the Vatican, yeah. So the local diocese, they basically put together this dossier that goes to a department in the Vatican called the Dicastery for the causes of saints. And they have an office in the Vatican City. Yeah, there is an office. You know, I mean, it's a physical office, which are people, you know, go to work and drink coffee and, you know, and have lunch. What's the miracle today that we're looking at? Yeah, they do. I mean, it's part of the portfolio. So, Roman, something I should explain here is that the dicastery for the causes of saints is a department that oversees the beatification and canonization process. Do you have any idea what those words are? Yeah, well, that's how you determine if, like, a holy person is actually a saint, right?

That's right. There is a process to determine who is worthy of sainthood in the Catholic Church. And the reason miracles go through this office is because you need two miracles to become a saint. So it's like, this is like your resume. Like under special skills, it's like started stopped hearts and stuff like that. You need like a couple of miracles on your resume to make it to Sainthood. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

And so in the Rhode Island miracle, that 19th century Spanish priest that the doctor prayed to, that priest is now on the path to sainthood. The Rhode Island miracle is involved in the beatification of a Spanish priest whose file was it dormant for, you know, for a long, long, long long time. And then I think somebody got really interested in the case and literally blew the cobwebs off and started doing more investigation. So what's the next step here? Like the case is now in the Vatican's hands and what happens? Right. So in this department at the Vatican, the dicastery for the causes of saints, which I just love saying, they perform basically a whole other investigation to the miracle. They gathered their own eyewitness accounts. They go back through the

medical records. And for a long time, there was actually an official role in this office for the devil's advocate. Wait, so is this like the origin of that term, devil's advocate? Yeah, it comes from this one job at the dicastery for the causes of saints. And the role for the devil's advocate was to find arguments against canonization. And one way you could do that is by poking holes in the miracles. Oh, I am so fascinated by this process. That's so interesting. I think the process This is really interesting, too, but it did change in the 1980s. Like, that title isn't really the title anymore. They have a different, more administrative kind of role or whatever.

But today, the people who are, like, poking holes in these miracles are mostly the medical experts. And Father Dorian actually knows a few of these people. My impression with them is that they're more likely to weigh on the edge of, you know, declaring something to have natural, purely medical explanation. They are not in the business of creating miracles or declaring miracles. It's not in their interest because they want the process to be as objective and as credible as possible. That is so interesting. It's so fascinating to have all this apparatus around them. And like you said, like these are all full-time jobs.

They go to the office. They do a thing. Like, who is putting this all together? Like, who pays for all this stuff? That is a great question, Roman, because I think getting a miracle through this process, is kind of a miracle in and of itself. So it can cost tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, to go through the beatification and canonization process.

And, you know, it's in that process that miracles get reviewed. So it's definitely not cheap. And it helps big time if you have a booster or someone with a lot of money who's interested in the cause. And actually, one of the big reasons these causes get stuck in a sort of purgatory is because it's just so expensive to keep these things moving. So what then happens if this miracle makes it through this new round of medical review and then a second investigation?

Does it become a miracle at that point? So it has one more level to go through. And this is essentially going in front of a bunch of bishops and theologians at the Vatican. And they're determining, hey, is the person on the path to sainthood really a saint? Are we positive that they are worthy of sainthood? This is where you just make sure that they're not like an ex-merger or something. Yes. Oh, my God.

That would be bad. But also part of this process that they're going through is just determining, like, are these miracles good? Are we buttoned up? Are we sure? Because if someone can easily explain away one of these miracles, that's like not a good look for the church. But it's also not a good look for the church to call something a miracle. if it is done by a person who isn't really saint worthy either. So it becomes kind of, it's like you want the miracle to be a miracle.

You also want the saint to be saintly. And if the two come together, then they're both kind of verified by each other. Yeah, I think there's a little bit of that going on for sure. But, you know, if it's able to jump through all these hoops, this miracle, it goes up to the Pope. And ultimately, they say, yay or nay. And in this Rhode Island case, and in a lot of cases, this can take. take years, even like decades for all of this to square away. And for me, at least, that's what I find interesting about this process. It just goes a pretty long way to make a miracle

mean something. You know, just because if you can call anything a miracle, then nothing is a miracle. That's right. Like, if you give out too many miracles, then everyone can be a saint, and you don't want that either. I'm no Saint Roman, but yes, that's the logic. Did I have tell you, like, one of my favorite pieces of box pop tape that was ever recorded and put on the radio was when Ratzinger was selected as Pope. And there's this NPR story featuring this young man who's just like losing it for Ratzinger. And he's like over the moon at Ratzinger becoming Pope. And he's like, we have a new Pope. And it's like, it's an awesome new Pope. We have two great popes right after another. Oh, it's awesome. It feels awesome. It's such an awesome pope following an

awesome Pope like Pope John Paul the Great. This is a really amazing, two awesome popes right after another. It means that he'll continue with a great work of hope, John Paul. I'm sure he'll continue World Youth Day. And he's just an awesome, holy man. It just cracks me up and it makes me smile. Oh, my God, I love that. This person is happier about this than I've ever been about anything in my entire life.

And he just makes me happy to hear him. Two hope, two great popes, one after the other. Anyway, well, this was fascinating stuff. I had no idea where all this stuff came from. I love it. Well, happy holidays to you and the family, Jay, and have a brilliant 2026. I appreciate it, Roman. 99% Invisible was produced this week by Chris Barube, Vivian Lay, and Jason DeLeon. Mixed by Martine Gonzalez, music by Swan Real. Fact-checking by Graham Hesha.

Special thanks this week to Emily Labajoff at the Luxor for help on Chris Burubei story. Next week, Kurt Colstead is going to take us beyond the 99% Invisible City. phone episode next week. And then we'll be back with more mini-stories in the new year. Kathy 2 is our executive producer. Kurt Kolstad is the digital director. Delany Hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Loshamidon, Joe Rosenberg, Kelly Prime, Jacob Medina Gleason, Talon, and Rain Stradley, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% of visible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of the Sirius XM podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building.

beautiful, uptown, Oakland, California. You can find us on all the usual social media sites as well as our own Discord server. There's a link to that as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99PI.org.