It's a basic tenet of friendship that you get to choose your friends. We look at two institutions that took away that choice: convents circa the 1960s and a summer program with unusual rules. What do we lose and what do we gain when we give up our preferences and …
It's a basic tenet of friendship that you get to choose your friends. We look at two institutions that took away that choice: convents circa the 1960s and a summer program with unusual rules. What do we lose and what do we gain when we give up our preferences and …
It's one of the most common and infuriating friend mysteries out there - a friend disappears into thin air. But where do these ghosts go? And why are we so haunted by them? _If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the_[ _National Suicide Prevention Lifeline_](http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/) _at …
It's one of the most common and infuriating friend mysteries out there - a friend disappears into thin air. But where do these ghosts go? And why are we so haunted by them? _If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the_[ _National Suicide Prevention Lifeline_](http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/) _at …
Friendship gets the Invisibilia treatment.
A 16-year-old Black kid walks into a gas station in Stockton, Calif. to buy gummy worms for his little sister. When the teen gets in an argument with the clerk over a damaged dollar bill, a white officer in plainclothes decides to intervene — with force. We bring you an …
Let's get slow. Producer Abby Wendle picks up the gauntlet that was thrown down in the last episode "[The Great Narrative Escape](https://www.npr.org/2021/05/19/998228413/the-great-narrative-escape)." Sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.
Imagine a TV show with no plot, no characters, no tension... and yet, it went viral! In this episode, we have a story that questions storytelling as we know it. Plus, co-hosts Kia Miakka Natisse and Yowei Shaw take a spectacularly unspectacular train ride.
Imagine a TV show with no plot, no characters, no tension... and yet, it went viral! In this episode, we have a story that questions storytelling as we know it. Plus, co-hosts Kia Miakka Natisse and Yowei Shaw take a spectacularly unspectacular train ride.
Imagine a TV show with no plot, no characters, no tension... and yet, it went viral! In this episode, we have a story that questions storytelling as we know it. Plus, co-hosts Kia Miakka Natisse and Yowei Shaw take a spectacularly unspectacular train ride.
Is _209 Times_ helping or hurting the community it claims to serve? What does the site mean for the future of local news in America? And what can be done about it? In the final installment of "The Chaos Machine" series , Yowei finds herself in the middle of a …
The man behind _209 Times_ is not who you'd expect. In Part 2, co-host Yowei Shaw discovers the website's surprising origin story, and ends up at the frontlines of a revolt against the mainstream media and a fight over who gets to own the truth.
Yowei gets a tip about Russian trolls in Stockton, California and falls down a hole of swirling conspiracy theories. At the center is a scrappy, controversial website that has become one of the most popular sources of local news in town. Some say it's doing important investigative journalism while others …
Yowei gets a tip about Russian trolls in Stockton, California and falls down a hole of swirling conspiracy theories. At the center is a scrappy, controversial website that has become one of the most popular sources of local news in town. Some say it's doing important investigative journalism while others …
Invisibilia explores a social experiment with money, focused around a contentious topic: reparations. What happens when you demand white people give up their wealth?
Invisibilia explores a social experiment with money, focused around a contentious topic: reparations. What happens when you demand white people give up their wealth?
Invisibilia is back! Stories that help you see the world differently, with new hosts Kia Miakka Natisse and Yowei Shaw.
Hacking, phishing, surveillance, disinformation... these are tools used to silence dissidents and influence elections. But what happens when these same methods are used against an ordinary citizen? The story of a man fighting an enemy he can't see and becoming increasingly paranoid.Which makes him a lot like the rest of …
The strange story of an unlikely crew of people who band together to take on one of our largest problems using nothing but whale sounds, machine learning, and a willingness to think outside the box. Even stranger, several of the world's most accomplished scientists seem to think they might have …
A city council candidate says he's black. But his opponent accuses him of being a white man pretending to be black. If race is simply a social construct and not a biological reality, how do we determine someone's race? And who gets to decide? We tell the story of a …