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Episode: Mini-Stories: Volume 19

Author: Roman Mars
Duration: 00:36:12

Episode Shownotes

Cheeky highway signs, Jane Fonda’s surprising side hustle, a dynamite twist on legacy, and the Greeks’ ideal foot obsession—expect the unexpected.Mini-Stories: Volume 19 Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to ad-free new episodes and get exclusive access to bonus content.

Full Transcript

00:00:01 Speaker_05
This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Everything outside might be frightful, but a new batch of mini-stories are here to make the next 30 minutes or so absolutely delightful.

00:00:14 Speaker_05
So grab something warm, gather the kids around the old wireless transceiver, and enjoy stories about funny and surprisingly controversial highway signs, Jane Fonda saving you money on rent, the most famous act of contrition of all time, or possibly the greatest PR comeback of all time, depending on who you're asking.

00:00:31 Speaker_05
And we learn together that the most accomplished artists of the classical world have all agreed that I, your host, have the most beautiful feet that a person can have. Let's go.

00:00:47 Speaker_03
So I'm joined by our producer, Chris Berube. Hey, Chris. Roman, it is the most wonderful time of the year. Great to be here. It's a delight to have you.

00:00:55 Speaker_05
So what is the story you have for us today?

00:00:57 Speaker_03
So Roman, I know I'm always comparing America to Canada as resident Canadian guy on the show. Yes, I'm well aware. Yeah. Look, my New Year's resolution, I'm gonna tone down the Canada stuff for next year on the show.

00:01:08 Speaker_03
I don't think you have to, but you do what feels right to you. Okay, okay. But I feel like I'm always making these comparisons that are like, this is better in Canada, this is better in Canada.

00:01:17 Speaker_03
One thing I do prefer in America is the electronic highway safety sign. Like a light board, and it has text on it, and it's a thing that'll say like, left lane closed ahead, something like that, right? Got it, got it, got it.

00:01:31 Speaker_03
Okay, so why do you like the ones in the U.S. better? In Canada, the signs are always bland, right? They will say something like, don't drive drunk, and then it will also say that same thing in French, right? Okay.

00:01:41 Speaker_03
But to express the same message in the U.S., I have found there are often jokes. So let me give you an example. Pennsylvania, recently, they had a highway sign around the 4th of July that read, don't drive star-spangled hammered.

00:01:56 Speaker_03
Okay, here I can give you some other ones. These are all over the country. So, in Mississippi, they ran a sign this year that said, four eyes in Mississippi, two eyes on the road. That's pretty good. In Massachusetts, it's use your blinker.

00:02:10 Speaker_03
I like this one. In New Jersey, they have one that said, slow down, this ain't Thunder Road. So, a joke for the Springsteen dads. And this phenomenon, it's actually across the country. So, Roman, have you actually seen any of these?

00:02:22 Speaker_05
I don't think these are very prominent in California, but I'm enjoying these quite a bit.

00:02:26 Speaker_03
Yeah, they're fun. So I was curious about these, and it turns out it's a very involved process to put these up. I would imagine so. So tell me more. I actually found this out because I talked to somebody who writes these signs.

00:02:39 Speaker_04
My name is Matt Burding. I'm the press secretary at the Ohio Department of Transportation. What ODOT does is make sure that the snow is cleared in the wintertime, make sure that the roads are passable in the summertime.

00:02:50 Speaker_04
We also have a big role to play in safety projects across the state.

00:02:54 Speaker_05
Oh wow, he has the modulation of an AM radio broadcaster. He's a good voice.

00:02:59 Speaker_03
Yeah, actually he was a radio broadcaster for many years before he was at the Ohio Department of Transportation, so that's why. That makes sense. Wow.

00:03:06 Speaker_03
So Matt works at ODOT, Ohio Department of Transportation, and they have about 200 of these electronic highway signs. And Matt says their primary goal, it's to convey emergency information or information like left lane closed ahead, right?

00:03:20 Speaker_03
But most of the time, they don't have messages like this they need to share. So they have all of this free space on the signs.

00:03:28 Speaker_03
And Matt says a couple years ago, ODOT started playing around with the funny signs, and they kept doing it because, according to Matt, they just make a much bigger impact.

00:03:38 Speaker_04
Think about the Super Bowl, and you watch the ads during the Super Bowl. Which ads are you most likely talking about Monday morning? You're talking about the ones that made you laugh. or the ones that made you have an emotional reaction.

00:03:53 Speaker_05
I mean, that certainly makes sense to me. So where do these specific jokes come from? Like who writes the jokes?

00:03:58 Speaker_03
So Robin, in Ohio where Matt works, they actually have a writer's room coming up with these jokes. Of course, that's great. So four times a year they have a meeting. Everybody comes to this meeting with like a list of ideas.

00:04:09 Speaker_03
They debate them and then they settle on a couple that are going to end up on the sides.

00:04:13 Speaker_04
I mean, sometimes I'll bring, you know, a couple dozen ideas and 30% of them don't fly. And sometimes you bring, you know, just a handful of them and they all go. So, it just varies. Yeah, that sounds like every pitch room I've ever been in.

00:04:31 Speaker_05
I mean, 30% is a pretty good failure rate, honestly.

00:04:34 Speaker_03
I was going to say, yeah, if our pitch meetings went that well, I think we'd be having a really good pitch meeting. But, according to Matt, they're coming up with these jokes, and there's a couple of parameters they have to work with.

00:04:44 Speaker_03
So, obviously, first thing, it has to fit on the sign, right? In Ohio, most of the signs are about 17 characters across three lines. So, that's not nothing, but that's not an unlimited amount of space. So, first thing, it has to fit on the sign.

00:04:58 Speaker_03
It also obviously shouldn't be offensive, shouldn't hurt anybody's feelings, things like that. But above all, it has to make everybody in the room laugh.

00:05:06 Speaker_05
Yeah, which is probably the hardest criterion of all, because humor is subjective.

00:05:09 Speaker_03
Of course, yeah. And Matt says part of how they correct for that is they always try to make sure they have people from different generations at each meeting.

00:05:17 Speaker_03
So he says they always make sure there's like a Gen Z staff person in there, there's a Gen Xer, you know, and if everybody's laughing, then it's probably going to work with the general public.

00:05:27 Speaker_05
It has to be someone there to tell you what cap means. Yes, exactly. That's super smart. So what kind of jokes work for that whole room?

00:05:36 Speaker_03
Matt told me there's a couple subjects that always tend to work pretty well. So the first one is holidays. So a couple of years ago, ODOT had this sign for the holiday season. It was visiting in-laws, slow down, get there late.

00:05:49 Speaker_04
Solid. One of them, for example, around Thanksgiving that we run every year is Turkey Says Buckle Buckle. It's goofy.

00:05:55 Speaker_04
It's one of those things that I can certainly hear a dad saying as he's driving with his family to grandma's house for Thanksgiving dinner. And the kids are all probably rolling their eyes going, great dad. Awful joke. Yeah, it's on the sign.

00:06:10 Speaker_04
You guys are all buckled up, right?

00:06:12 Speaker_03
Second inspiration is local references. So you'll make a joke about a football game coming up. Be like, you know, don't be like Michigan, drive defensively. I don't know. I'm just making up an example.

00:06:22 Speaker_03
I don't know if Michigan's football team is bad at defense, but you'll make some joke about a geography pun, right? A lot of states do this.

00:06:29 Speaker_03
And Matt says the ODOT team actually will steal signs from other states and then just update them with their own local references. I'm going to be honest with you.

00:06:38 Speaker_04
Look, we all talk to each other. So, you know, what's a good idea in Colorado is probably a good idea in Ohio, too. I don't remember which state it was. I want to say maybe it was Utah that did camp in the mountains, not the left lane.

00:06:53 Speaker_04
We don't really have mountains in Ohio, but we did camp in Ohio State Parks, not the left lane. I think Missouri does camp in the Ozarks, not the left lane.

00:07:02 Speaker_03
Matt says this is like part of the process is that states love to steal from each other and like they'll meet up at a conference and they'll trade these jokes and they'll be like, oh, that works. I could do this for mine.

00:07:11 Speaker_03
So you got geography, you got holidays. The signs that get the most attention though, these are the ones in Ohio and across America that everybody seems to love. They're inspired by pop culture. So these are the signs that go viral.

00:07:24 Speaker_03
These are the signs people are posting on social media. Roman, could I share a couple of the pop culture jokes?

00:07:29 Speaker_05
I would be disappointed if you did not.

00:07:31 Speaker_03
Okay, so here we go. Arizona, they ran this one around Christmas a couple years ago. Yippee-ki-yay, sober drivers. Oh my God, okay. So that's of course a diehard reference. Yeah, no, of course. The ultimate Christmas movie, yeah.

00:07:45 Speaker_03
More recently, Mississippi ran one that said, texting and driving, say, hi, it's me, I'm the problem, it's me. I mean, it's a simple one, but you know, Taylor Swift was really big that summer, that makes sense.

00:07:55 Speaker_03
And pop culture jokes are great because, you know, they're more relevant than your kind of dad jokey, turkey gobble gobble jokes, but it's kind of high risk too, right? Because not everybody is going to get the joke necessarily.

00:08:07 Speaker_05
Yeah, no, that makes sense to me. We don't all consume the same pop culture, especially today, yeah.

00:08:12 Speaker_03
Right, and that can be really alienating, right? So Matt actually has a perfect example of this where they tried a pop culture one and it just went wrong.

00:08:18 Speaker_04
Being in Ohio, if you know the movie A Christmas Story, very popular in Ohio because it was filmed in the Cleveland area. So one year we put on the message boards, life is fragile.

00:08:31 Speaker_04
slow down and we spelled out phonetically fragile because if you're familiar with the Christmas story, you know, the scene where the dad opens up the, you know, gets the box of the big prize that he wins and like, you know, fragile must be Italian.

00:08:45 Speaker_04
There are people who have not seen a Christmas story, believe it or not, who read that. And we're like, what in the world is ODOT trying to say here? You're driving on the highway at 70 miles an hour. We can't explain it to you. You just got to get it.

00:08:59 Speaker_04
And if you don't get it, then that's probably not a good message to run.

00:09:03 Speaker_03
So in general, people love these signs. You know, they're popular, they get shared on social media, but there is a problem. One group in particular really does not like them. And that group is the Federal Highway Administration.

00:09:17 Speaker_05
Oh no, those guys.

00:09:19 Speaker_03
Those guys. Well, the FHWA, they're in charge of highway safety for the United States. And in their opinion, these signs can be kind of a distraction. So a couple years ago, they actually made New Jersey take down one of these signs.

00:09:34 Speaker_03
So the sign said, hold on to your butts, help prevent forest fires. Ha ha ha, funny joke. But what happened is people were actually slowing down to take pictures of the sign, which is obviously not safe.

00:09:46 Speaker_03
It's kind of working at cross purposes to what the sign is supposed to be doing. So they actually told the state, you have to take this down. That is disappointing. I get where they're coming from though. Right?

00:09:58 Speaker_03
But earlier this year, the FHWA, they put out their national guidelines for highway safety. They update these every couple of years. And it was a little bit like mom and dad turning on all the lights at a party and telling everybody to go home.

00:10:12 Speaker_03
because they included guidelines for what a highway safety sign should say. They said it should be informative. It should be sober. So here it is. This is the FHWA example of a good highway sign. They say, unbuckled seat belts equals fine plus points.

00:10:29 Speaker_03
Oh, no, that's dreadful. It's really dry, yeah. So is that it? Is that the end for the funny highway sign? Well, the guidelines came out in January and suddenly there were all these newspaper stories that were saying like, funny signs will be banned.

00:10:41 Speaker_03
You know, say goodbye to the highway signs. It's actually not quite what's happening here because these are guidelines, right? But Matt says it's really important to him to keep some humor in the signs because there's evidence of this.

00:10:54 Speaker_03
There's studies that show this. When you're being entertained, you're more likely to retain these kind of messages, and it makes people think about their driving. So in that way, it does save lives.

00:11:04 Speaker_04
I don't think we're going to suddenly see a huge swing in fatalities or crashes because of these, but I think we are taking little bites at it, and it's worth it.

00:11:14 Speaker_04
It doesn't cost the taxpayers anything extra, and I certainly don't think it makes it worse. So if it makes it better for even a handful of people, then I think it's worth that effort.

00:11:25 Speaker_03
Now, Roman, if you have an idea for a funny highway sign, I have some good news. You can share your pitches with ODOT. There's a website for it, and Matt says they consider every pitch that's sent in. Oh my God.

00:11:39 Speaker_03
If you enjoy the institution of the funny highway sign, you have an opportunity. It's at the website, zerodeaths.ohio.gov. So check it out.

00:11:48 Speaker_05
I'm gonna spend some quality time on this. Well, thank you, Chris. This is delightful. Thanks, Roman. OK, so we're here with 99PI producer Vivian Leigh. What do you have for us this year?

00:12:02 Speaker_00
So I wanted to share a story that was one of the more interesting detours that I stumbled upon while reporting another story. So you remember an episode that we did in early 2024 that's also in contention for the longest podcast title ever.

00:12:16 Speaker_00
It was called Warning. This podcast contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer or other reproductive harm.

00:12:23 Speaker_05
Of course, it's one of my favorite titles ever. So I love it.

00:12:28 Speaker_00
And if if other listeners miss that one, it was essentially about the history of this law in California that passed in 1986 that required all California businesses to put a warning label on any products that contain cancer causing chemicals.

00:12:42 Speaker_00
And a big part of the reason why that law originally passed was because Jane Fonda was a huge proponent of that proposition.

00:12:49 Speaker_05
Yes. Yeah. I mean, she's the one who kind of rounded up a ton of these celebrities and, you know, they they went on this bus and actually brought like a lot of good attention to this proposition.

00:13:01 Speaker_00
Yes, exactly. Chiffy Chase was there. It was a whole thing. But while I was researching that story, I found out that that victory might not have been possible if it weren't for the Jane Fondo workout tapes. Roman, would you care to hear more?

00:13:15 Speaker_05
Yes, absolutely. I want to hear more.

00:13:18 Speaker_00
Okay, so Jane Fonda has been a huge progressive activist for literally decades. She's probably somewhere getting arrested at a climate rally as we speak. But back in the 1970s, Fonda was this huge anti-war activist and

00:13:33 Speaker_00
Doing that work, she met another fellow anti-war activist turned state assemblyman. His name was Tom Hayden. And Hayden and Fonda eventually got married, and together they realized that they needed to influence politics from within the system.

00:13:49 Speaker_00
So the mid-ish 1970s, they founded a political action committee called the Campaign for Economic Democracy. And one of the big goals of the CED, I call it the CED for short, was trying to get progressive new left candidates into local office.

00:14:06 Speaker_00
But the problem was that political action committees take a lot of money to run.

00:14:11 Speaker_01
This was a statewide organization that made a huge difference in California.

00:14:17 Speaker_00
This is Jane Fonda in an interview with Democracy Now.

00:14:20 Speaker_01
We elected people that are still serving in public office in California. And so we had to raise a lot of money because we had a lot of chapters. and there was a recession.

00:14:31 Speaker_00
You see, the CED had to pay for field offices, staffers put on events, pay for political advertising, all that stuff that helps fund local campaigns.

00:14:41 Speaker_00
So Fonda was trying to solve this question of how to realistically keep the CED going financially, which was hard because Fonda and Hayden's politics were considered pretty outside of the mainstream at the time.

00:14:55 Speaker_00
But she says that she got an idea one day after she saw a story about a very controversial politician.

00:15:00 Speaker_01
I read an article that Lyndon LaRouche, that really bad but very wealthy guy, had a computer business that would fund people, that would hold those signs at the airports.

00:15:09 Speaker_01
And I read an article that said that he supported all that with his computer business.

00:15:14 Speaker_00
So, Roman, do you know who Lyndon LaRouche is?

00:15:17 Speaker_05
I mean, I know the name. Like, I kind of know it. I mean, I kind of think of him as this as I was growing up, this perennial presidential candidate. I know he was referenced on The Simpsons, which is probably stuck in my head.

00:15:30 Speaker_05
But let's say for purposes of this story, like, no. Tell me more about Lyndon LaRouche.

00:15:35 Speaker_00
OK, so Lyndon LaRouche was a very prolific conspiracy theorist who spouted a lot of terrible anti-Semitic and homophobic and racist views. He also claimed that Queen Elizabeth controlled the world's drug trade.

00:15:49 Speaker_00
Anyway, so LaRouche is also known for unsuccessfully running for president eight consecutive times in a row. He actually holds the record for that.

00:15:58 Speaker_00
But as you can imagine, Roman, running for president, even, you know, unsuccessfully takes a lot of money.

00:16:03 Speaker_00
So Fonda read that he was able to fund his political aspirations privately through his computer consulting software and printing businesses on the side.

00:16:12 Speaker_01
So I thought, OK, what business can I go into that could make money? And it was the workout.

00:16:17 Speaker_05
The workout. Wait, so the Jane Fonda workout.

00:16:19 Speaker_01
So did the workout exist?

00:16:25 Speaker_05
already, or her workout exists already, or did she?

00:16:29 Speaker_00
Which came first? Talk to me. A little bit of background on the Jane Fonda workout. Exercise is something that had been really important to Jane Fonda for a really long time.

00:16:39 Speaker_00
But in 1978, around the same time that the CED was getting going, she broke her foot while filming a movie, and she was looking for some new, low-impact form of exercise that would be less taxing on that part of the body.

00:16:53 Speaker_00
And she ended up meeting an exercise instructor named Lenny Kasdan who introduced her to these long total body workouts and she fell in love with it.

00:17:01 Speaker_00
And she ended up opening a bunch of exercise studios and then eventually releasing the Jane Fonda workout book, which was wildly popular. And talk about how much money we're talking here. You blew everyone away.

00:17:13 Speaker_01
How long were you on The New York Times bestseller list for? Two years. Two solid years.

00:17:18 Speaker_01
That is what caused The New York Times to start separating it out into categories, because to have the workout book competing with, you know, Philip Roth or somebody didn't make any sense. I mean, two years on the bestseller list.

00:17:31 Speaker_05
That's really something.

00:17:33 Speaker_00
How long was the 99PI book on the bestseller list?

00:17:37 Speaker_05
I mean, it was like in the top 10 for like three weeks. So I was pretty proud of that. That's pretty good.

00:17:44 Speaker_05
But if it wasn't for her splitting out the list, we would not have ranked because we were in the nonfiction list and not competing with the fiction bestseller list.

00:17:51 Speaker_00
Interesting. Jane Fonda, thank you again for all of your work. But yeah, so, you know, eventually in the 1980s, like the early 1980s, Fonda was approached to bring her work out to this newfangled technology called home video.

00:18:08 Speaker_00
And she said that she was at first actually very hesitant to put out a workout tape. You know, she was a movie star at the time and she thought it would be terrible for her acting career.

00:18:17 Speaker_00
But she agreed to do it because, you know, A, nobody would ever watch it because this was such a new technology that she barely knew anybody who owned a VCR. And B, she thought it might bring some extra cash in for the CED.

00:18:30 Speaker_05
And that must have been even more successful because I didn't even know there was a book, you know, like so like the like me growing up, it was the Jane Fonda workout tapes. So it must have even eclipsed those.

00:18:40 Speaker_00
Oh, yeah, totally. She she ended up selling over 17 million tapes. And it's actually thought that the Jane Fonda workout tapes were so popular that they led to an increase in VCR sales.

00:18:50 Speaker_00
And Fonda says that pretty much all of that money went straight into the campaign for economic democracy.

00:18:55 Speaker_05
Wow. Well, that's incredible. I mean, in addition to, like, pushing VCR sales, did the tape sales actually move forward the politics of the CED? Like, did it actually change California or world politics?

00:19:08 Speaker_00
Yeah, so the CED invested in a bunch of progressive causes in California, like investing in solar power, labor rights, anti-war initiatives, women's rights, of course, Proposition 65.

00:19:21 Speaker_00
But I think one of the biggest, most tangible successes of the CED was getting rent control laws passed in Santa Monica. And this is something that has actually had a lasting impact on the city, and it still exists today. Wow.

00:19:33 Speaker_05
So if you live in a rent controlled apartment in the city of Santa Monica, this is essentially because of Jane Fonda and the Jane Fonda workout tapes.

00:19:40 Speaker_00
Wow. Yes, exactly. And I actually do have a friend who lived in a rent controlled apartment in Santa Monica for like 14 years, and he only just recently moved out to start a family.

00:19:51 Speaker_00
And when I learned about this, I texted him and I was just like, Brandon, if you ever meet Jane Fonda, you better thank her for saving you thousands and thousands of dollars.

00:20:02 Speaker_05
That's perfect. Oh, it's such a fun little side story. I'm glad we could take this little detour as a little bonus from your Prop 65 story, which people should go listen to if they haven't heard it. It's like one of my favorites of recent memory.

00:20:14 Speaker_00
Thank you. Awesome. Merry Christmas to me. Thank you, Vivian. Thank you, Roman.

00:20:28 Speaker_05
Coming up, why the ancient Greeks who believed in a perfect version of everything were obsessed with feet.

00:20:34 Speaker_05
And how the man who invented dynamite came back from the dead, sort of, to clear his name and ended up creating the most famous prize in the world. That's after the break.

00:20:52 Speaker_05
In October, we released an episode with the great Stephen Johnson talking about his latest book, The Infernal Machine, all about how the invention of dynamite drastically changed the political landscape in the U.S.

00:21:02 Speaker_05
when it became the weapon of choice by domestic terrorists. Dynamite unleashed a new kind of horrific, violent, destructive power that the world had never seen before.

00:21:13 Speaker_02
which was people being fully blown up. Like, the physical damage to the body, there's all this kind of newspaper reports like, we were not able to identify the remains of this other person.

00:21:23 Speaker_02
Like, if you were right on top of a dynamite explosion, you know, you were reduced to small little pieces of human flesh. And that was something that had not really happened to the human body before. And it suddenly started happening all the time.

00:21:35 Speaker_05
Dynamite was invented by Alfred Nobel, and it made him one of the richest men in the world. But it took a death in the family and a case of mistaken identity for him to truly understand what the public really thought of him.

00:21:47 Speaker_05
Author Stephen Johnson talked me through this amazing story.

00:21:53 Speaker_02
His brother died, and a couple of French newspapers got confused and thought that Nobel himself had died. So he was put in the somewhat unusual position of getting to read his own obituaries in the paper, and they were not positive.

00:22:10 Speaker_02
And kind of the famous headline was, the merchant of death is dead.

00:22:15 Speaker_05
Yeah, and it gets worse because the first line of his obituary reads, Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday, which is a real good punch. Yeah.

00:22:29 Speaker_02
Yeah. You'd hate to read that if you're still alive.

00:22:37 Speaker_02
And so, you know, this whole career that he'd spent, you know, unleashing this explosive force on the world designed to help it modernize and build railroads and skyscrapers and subways and sewer systems, all of which had happened and which had made him like one of the wealthiest people in the world.

00:22:54 Speaker_02
At his, you know, alleged death, what was remembered was that he had unleashed all this terrible, catastrophic violence on the world, thanks to the political radicals who had stolen his technology and put it to nefarious uses.

00:23:08 Speaker_05
But that is definitely not how he was remembered today, because of one person.

00:23:12 Speaker_02
And so Nobel had developed, before this point, a long enduring friendship with a peace activist named Bertha von Suttner.

00:23:20 Speaker_02
And she had argued to him that he should use his prodigious fortune in the service of the peace cause that was kind of on the rise at that point. And something in the accidental reading of his obituaries

00:23:34 Speaker_02
and the recognition that his legacy was likely to be very tarnished.

00:23:38 Speaker_02
And his long conversation with Suttner led him to change his will and take the vast majority of his fortune to endow now the thing that is actually most associated with Nobel's name, not dynamite, but the Nobel Prizes.

00:23:54 Speaker_02
and most famously, the Peace Prize, which was a very unusual, it was one thing to have a kind of a scientific prize, a Nobel Prize in physics and chemistry seemed to make sense and particularly made sense with something like chemistry where Nobel had been a pioneer in chemistry himself.

00:24:09 Speaker_02
But the idea of a Peace Prize was a very unusual thing. And it is now arguably like the most prestigious prize that one can receive in the world. And von Suttner actually was one of the early recipients of it.

00:24:21 Speaker_02
So part of her, her legacy was advocating for peace and also advocating for Nobel to create the Peace Prize, which then became a force for good in the world in many ways and enduring to this day.

00:24:34 Speaker_05
Steven Johnson's most recent book is called The Infernal Machine. I loved it. You're going to love it. It's dynamite, as are his other 13 books about science, technology and innovation, even though the others are not actually about dynamite.

00:24:45 Speaker_05
Only this one is, but they're all dynamite nonetheless. So, Jo Rosenberg, what do you have for me today?

00:24:55 Speaker_07
Well, Roman, this story starts just a couple months ago when I'm at home and I'm walking around barefoot and I go into my roommate's room to ask her about something.

00:25:05 Speaker_07
And before I can even get a word in, she just blurts out, Oh my God, what the hell is wrong with your feet? And I look down at my feet. I look up again. And I say, what do you mean? Because she sounded truly alarmed.

00:25:20 Speaker_07
At which point she goes, your big toe is shorter than your second toe. Yeah, and it's true. My big toe is slightly shorter than my second toe.

00:25:30 Speaker_07
But genuinely, before this moment, it had never once occurred to me to think about the lengths of people's big toes relative to their other toes, much less my own.

00:25:41 Speaker_05
You know, now that you mention it, my second toe is also longer than my big toe. But if you were to tell me to draw a foot, I think I would draw them in sort of a kind of straight diagonal progression from big toe to little toe.

00:25:53 Speaker_07
Oh, OK. So your your big toe is also shorter than your second toe.

00:25:57 Speaker_05
That's right. That's right. I'm one. I'm one of you.

00:26:00 Speaker_07
Oh, OK. Oh, this is OK. Well, then, in fact, this story is going to have suddenly the stakes just got a lot higher. So, most feet, you know, yeah, they form more or less that kind of diagonal line with the big toe being biggest.

00:26:14 Speaker_07
And my feet, and apparently your feet, do not. At least in my case, the end of my foot instead just kind of forms this gentle curve.

00:26:24 Speaker_07
But my roommate was just adamant about this, that the length of my big toes, or specifically their lack of length, was just plain wrong.

00:26:33 Speaker_05
And so how did you take this in emotionally?

00:26:36 Speaker_07
Externally, with grace. Internally, I am freaking out. I already have other things about my body that I'm not pleased with.

00:26:45 Speaker_07
And so I do the only thing I can do at that moment, which is to rush back to my room, go on my computer and look up what it means when your big toe is abnormally short.

00:26:53 Speaker_05
What did you find? I mean, what did the Internet tell you? Not that I put a ton of credence on the Internet when it comes to like what thing is going on with my body. But still, what did the Internet tell you?

00:27:02 Speaker_07
Well, in this case, you should put total credence in the internet, because I found total vindication.

00:27:07 Speaker_05
Oh, excellent.

00:27:08 Speaker_07
Yeah, it turns out that this is a thing in the art world, because in the Western artistic tradition, throughout its long history of depicting the human form, there are three major foot shapes that you'll see come up.

00:27:21 Speaker_07
And they are Egyptian, Roman, and Greek.

00:27:25 Speaker_05
And so I'm assuming that's because this is how the Egyptian, Romans, and Greek sculptors and painters each portrayed feet.

00:27:32 Speaker_07
Exactly. But also each of these three categories corresponds to types of feet commonly found worldwide. And broadly speaking, an Egyptian foot is when your big toe is longer than your other toes.

00:27:46 Speaker_07
And that is far and away, as mentioned, the most common type of foot worldwide. In one study, it's something like 70% of the global population. Then there is the slightly rarer Roman foot.

00:27:58 Speaker_07
That is when your big toe is the same length as your second toe and often third toe. And that's like 25% of people. And then there is what you and I have. the Greek foot, which is when your big toe is shorter than your second toe.

00:28:13 Speaker_07
And the Greek foot is the rarest foot of all. In this same study, only 5% of people have it.

00:28:19 Speaker_05
Wow. I would have never thought such a thing. So given that it's so rare, what determines whether or not you have a Greek foot?

00:28:27 Speaker_07
It's a little unclear. You'll be shocked to learn that toe length is not a top priority in the medical community right now. And to be clear, there's no definitive study of the numbers.

00:28:35 Speaker_07
They can vary quite a bit, but it pops up more in a few populations throughout the world. So according to, again, different studies, maybe like 30% of the Nedoma in Nigeria have it.

00:28:46 Speaker_07
Possibly a majority of people with Ainu ancestry in northern Japan have it as well.

00:28:52 Speaker_07
But the important part for you and me is that according to no less a source than Wikipedia, my foot, my much maligned and ridiculed foot with its short big toe, was not only depicted, but treasured by the ancient Greeks who believed, and I kid you not, that it was the platonically ideal form of the human foot.

00:29:15 Speaker_05
Well, take that unnamed roommate. That'll show her making fun of Joe Rosenberg's feet.

00:29:21 Speaker_07
That's right. And I'm obviously, I'm not going to disclose her name. I'd hate to, you know, humiliate her in front of our audience of millions. Yeah.

00:29:29 Speaker_07
But it gets better because it says that throughout most of Western artistic history, it was, quote, an idealized form, which has persisted as an aesthetic standard.

00:29:40 Speaker_05
So like you and I have won like the foot lottery. The Western canon has determined that we have beautiful, beautiful feet.

00:29:46 Speaker_07
We do. And I need to insert a brief PSA here, which is that in the medical world, there's actually a name for it. It's called Morton's toe. And it can lead to gait issues that lead to leg and back pain later on in life.

00:29:59 Speaker_07
So, you know, if you feel like you have an extreme version of this, maybe go check it out with your doctor. But that is not relevant to what we're discussing today. We're going to we're going to move on to the more important stuff here.

00:30:10 Speaker_05
OK, so how did that aesthetic ideal come about? Like, how did the Greek foot initially become considered this, you know, the quote unquote persistent aesthetic standard?

00:30:20 Speaker_07
Well, perhaps not surprisingly, something like 40 percent of Greeks have it. And possibly, yeah, like a majority of Greek men.

00:30:26 Speaker_05
So the ancient Greeks just looked down on their feet and just decided, oh, this toe configuration is the best.

00:30:32 Speaker_07
Obviously.

00:30:34 Speaker_07
And if you think back to your high school history class, you might remember that when classical Greek culture came about, the Greek philosophers and artists were just obsessed with the idea that you could find the ideal form of every little thing.

00:30:49 Speaker_05
Right, the Greeks thought they could deduce this idealized form of the perfect tree, the platonic ideal is what I was taught.

00:30:55 Speaker_07
Yes, exactly. And there was actually a famous Greek sculptor, Polykleitos, who apparently laid out the perfect proportions of a human male body in a treatise. And sadly, all the exact measurements from this treatise are lost to history.

00:31:10 Speaker_07
But one thing that Polykleitos and the other Greek artists believed was that the big toe absolutely had to be shorter than the second toe. And how much shorter are we talking here?

00:31:21 Speaker_07
Admittedly, it's a little unclear, and it's also honestly not clear what their rationale was besides the fact that so many Greek people had it.

00:31:29 Speaker_07
Every article I've found on this likes to say it might have been due to the golden ratio, but what exactly toe length has to do with the golden ratio, no one ever bothers to explain.

00:31:39 Speaker_05
As soon as the golden ratio is brought into something, I'm like, okay, this is a bunch of nonsense.

00:31:43 Speaker_07
Yeah. Nevertheless, the Greeks end up having a disproportionate cultural impact. And so there's basically been like 2,500 years of Western art in which the depiction of the human form has been influenced by the Greeks.

00:31:56 Speaker_07
And so when it comes to the great works of Western art, our toes, Roman, are in very good company. Needless to say, I prepared a small slideshow.

00:32:07 Speaker_07
Let me start you off with what is arguably the most admired and well-preserved ancient Greek bronze of all time.

00:32:14 Speaker_07
It's called Boxer at Rest, in which this very handsome guy, who I personally think kind of looks like Paul Meskel, sits in this kind of beautiful, exhausted repose.

00:32:26 Speaker_05
Okay, let me click on this one.

00:32:28 Speaker_07
Oh, yeah, yeah, that's nice. And here is a detail, of course, of one of his perfect Greek feet with its slightly smaller big toe.

00:32:37 Speaker_05
Yeah, this is very subtle, but I can see this is a lovely idealized foot.

00:32:41 Speaker_07
Absolutely. And lest you think this is restricted to men, let's move on to Renaissance painting with no less than Botticelli's Birth of Venus. Oh, yeah. Venus, I will remind you, is the goddess of Roman beauty.

00:32:55 Speaker_07
And here are her even more pronounced Greek feet.

00:32:58 Speaker_05
Oh, goodness, yeah. They really are leaning in hard. It looks like a finger almost.

00:33:02 Speaker_07
Yeah. And the list of Greek feet goes on. You know, Leonardo's drawings of the ideal human form, you know, the one in the circle.

00:33:10 Speaker_05
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:33:11 Speaker_07
Michelangelo's David. And my personal favorite example of Greek feet, the Statue of Liberty.

00:33:17 Speaker_05
Oh, wow. Yeah. I've never noticed this before. Is that like the biggest, short, big toe on display in the world?

00:33:24 Speaker_07
It might be. You know, there's only a few challengers and I probably should check them out.

00:33:30 Speaker_05
I've never looked at her feet before. Like, not only is the second toe quite long, the pinky toe is weirdly far back. It looks bizarre.

00:33:41 Speaker_07
Yeah, no, it is truly bizarre looking. I personally think that my Greek feet are better than her Greek feet. And I should add, I think we also might actually make great foot models if we ever needed the extra cash.

00:33:54 Speaker_07
Because I can't confirm this, but a quick Google search for foot-related products like sandals suggests that a disproportionate number of foot models also have Greek feet. So I think the modeling agencies might need to give us a call.

00:34:07 Speaker_05
Yeah, I think that makes total sense to me. Or, you know, this is opening up a dark doorway.

00:34:12 Speaker_07
Yeah. I mean, do you know about WikiFeet, Roman?

00:34:14 Speaker_05
I do. I mean, I heard that name before, but I've never dared to look. I do know that at one point I posted a picture on Instagram of a piece of art in my house. And we don't wear shoes in my house. And so my feet were on display.

00:34:30 Speaker_05
And my stepdaughter texted and said, you put your feet on the internet? And I was like, what? So I'm aware of this, but I have not opened that door. Like, this is not a subculture. I'm like going to explore it greatly, I don't think.

00:34:46 Speaker_07
Well, but at least you know now that you have truly beautiful feet.

00:34:51 Speaker_05
Well, you have beautiful feet too, Jo.

00:34:53 Speaker_07
Oh my God, well thank you, Roman. Yeah, don't hate us because we're beautiful.

00:34:57 Speaker_05
Don't hate us because we're beautiful. Thank you so much, Jo, this was fun.

00:35:00 Speaker_07
This was a lot of fun, Roman, thanks.

00:35:07 Speaker_05
99% Invisible was produced this week by Chris Berrupe, Vivian Ley, Jacob Medina-Gleason, and Joe Rosenberg. Edited by Christopher Johnson. Mixed by Martín González. Music by Swan Real. Fact-checking by Laura Bollins. Kathy Tu is our executive producer.

00:35:20 Speaker_05
Kurt Kolstad is the digital director. Delaney Hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Emmett Fitzgerald, Gabriella Gladney, Laush Madonna, Nina Potok, Kelly Prime, Jason DeLeon, and me, Roman Mars. Taylor Shedrick is our intern.

00:35:33 Speaker_05
The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of the Stitcher and SiriusXM podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building in beautiful Uptown, Oakland, California.

00:35:45 Speaker_05
You can find us on Blue Sky, which is definitely the best mass social media site that anyone can hang out on. We're going to make a go of it there, so give it a try.

00:35:52 Speaker_05
Or you can connect with us on our Discord server where there's over 5,000 people talking about the power broker, talking about architecture, talking about a bunch of other stuff.

00:36:01 Speaker_05
There's a link to that as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99PI.org.