99% Invisible - 564- Mini-Stories: Volume 17

Episode Date: December 20, 2023

It's the most wonderful time of the year. It's mini-stories season! Gather the kids around the fire because We have a year-end mix of short stories about a rogue architect, spooky kitchens, a hundred year old music streaming service, and the crazy way the French tried to make telling time less crazy.Today's episode featured a story from Sound Detectives. Listen to Sound Detectives on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and go to sounddetectivespodcast.com to find coloring pages, sound terms, and more.Mini-Stories: Volume 17

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. It's the most wonderful time of the year. It's mini story season. Gather the kids around the fire because we have a year and mix of short stories about a rogue architect, spooky kitchens, a 100 year old music streaming service, and the crazy way the French try to make telling time less crazy. Let's go.

So we are here with producer Chris Barouba, Hey, Chris. Hello, Roman. What do you have for us? Okay, so I've been very into the French Revolution recently. I know there's been these online trends of people reading up about the Roman Empire, but you know, I'm a little different. I'm kind of zigging where other people are sagging. I don't know if you knew this about me. I didn't know this. I mean, why exactly are you reading about the French Revolution? I don't know. I mean, I've been on a bit of a history camp.

And the French Revolution is interesting. I mean, the French Revolutionaries, they saw themselves as the beginning of history, right? Like, this is a whole new way of doing things. They're just trying lots of new things, like new system of government, a reign of terror, just new everything. New country with new laws and new ways of working that was very rational. Roman, that is Don Norman, the author of a book called The Design of Everyday Things, and a favorite of 99% visible. Absolutely.

I mean, my friend in college giving me a copy of The Design of Everyday Things is probably one of the reasons why this show exists. I mean, he's that pivotal. He's like our spiritual godfather. Totally. And Don actually talks about the French Revolution in that book, because as part of this new rational society

they were building the French introduced an idea called decimalization, which is a system of measurements that uses 10 as the base number. So they switched everything, that's where kilograms, that's where grams and kilograms comes from, and meters. So the idea behind that is when things are divisible by 10, it's just easier to do math. Guess what, I have 10 fingers. So this base system of 10 decimalizations where the metric system comes in,

they also had this idea for something called decimal time. Huh. So Roman, in a standard day, like we have now, we have 24 hours, each hour has 60 minutes, and each minute has 60 seconds. Correct, I am familiar with that one, yes. Right, so we've had that for a really long time. However, after the French Revolution, the legislative body, the convention, they wanted to try this

new system of time that was based on decimalization. They're like, this is a new idea. Ignoring the fact China had something similar to this up until the 17th century, but ignore that. Ignore that. This is the French, you know, they're saying this is our new idea. And this whole system, everything had a base of 10. So basically, everything could be divided by 10. They tried to say, well, let's see, there should be 10 days in the week, right? And there should be 10 hours in the day. Okay, well, there's a lot to sort of like figure out

all the repercussions of that. Oh, yeah. Okay, so 10 day weeks. Yeah, so 10 days a week, and actually it wasn't called a week in the system. It was called a decade just to make everything a little more confusing. Okay. And the biggest challenge is this idea of the 10 hour day. So 10 hour days each hour would have 100 minutes. Each minute would have 100 seconds. Okay. And you might have noticed, that doesn't quite add up to the same length of a day that we have right now.

10 hour days, 100 minutes. Okay, that's. I could see you doing the math. I could see you. Is that gonna be, is that close to what we have now or longer, longer? It'd be longer. Yeah, the day would be longer in that situation,

but the way to make it work, so the length of the day doesn't change, is actually you could change the length of a second. So instead of a second being one steam boat, it could be one steam buck. So like you have a shorter second, and that would make the math work, so the day would be the same length. Wow. Okay. Okay. So the French developed this new, more rational way

of keeping in time, but how did they get people to accept one steam as the link that was second? Like how did you implement this? Well, the French introduced this new calendar with like 10 day weeks and this new time keeping system in 10 other days in 1793. And it didn't go great right away to be honest. I should say they kind of half introduced it, like officially

France switched over to this new system. But according to accounts from the time, only some people were half using it, like people were just getting adjusted to it. And to help ease the transition, they actually made up these special clocks that had both the systems of time on the clock face. So, Roman, take a look at this. Okay. So, the interface has 100 seconds to a minute, and then it also has the 60 seconds in an hour on the outside ring, so it helps you with the conversion.

That's really nice. Yeah, so it's like the inside, you have like Roman numerals one through 10 and one through 100. And then the outside, you have up to 24. So you have the 24 hour clock in the outside and the 10 hour clock on the inside. And the idea was you can look at it and see both at the same time. So it's kind of this nicely designed object.

It's very elegant, I think. It's clever. It's complex, but the complexities were reason. So it's a transitional piece. So, you know, given that you had these nice little clocks sent out to people to help them convert, what was the resistance like? Yeah, I mean, just imagine completely switching your understanding of time in a day. I mean, the issues are kind of exactly what you'd expect. Like, there's international trade. So you can't really sync up with other countries that are using a completely different way of time keeping, right?

Second, it's annoying, you know, it's expensive to replace all the clocks, even if you have these nice, elegant, you know, two-faced clocks. And I mean, the biggest thing is like, people are stubborn about it, right? Like, in this system, a decimal hour would be the equivalent of two hours and 24 minutes. Yeah, that does not feel natural. No, I mean, it's like, it's like the length of a new Hollywood movie in these days. Like the, like the shortest Marvel movie would be an hour. It would be, it would be one hour long.

Well, it's not, the way I'd like to think about it, it's somewhere between Barbie and Oppenheimer. It's almost the difference between the two films. But that's a huge shift, right? Like, it's going to be this expensive time-consuming thing, just a really big pain in the ass. And also there were like no obvious benefits to changing it. Like the 12-hour, 24-hour system worked just fine. So people were not eager to try a new thing

just for the sake of it. So when did the French abandon it? So they had the calendar, right? They had the calendar with 10-day weeks and all that. That actually lasted into the 19th century, that lasted for a few years. But the 10-hour day, that did not really take off and that was actually abandoned after less than two years. And so did that kill the whole idea of decimal time?

It seems like we always have these sort of moments where people reassess and try to have a more rational, like, counting system and measurement system and even time system. So there have been proposals over the years to reintroduce decimal time. At a conference, a mathematician will be like, oh, this is an interesting idea. Let's think about it. But the most high profile version of this was by the Swiss company Swatch in 1998. So as a publicity stunt, they introduced an idea they called internet time that would divide up the day into 1,000 swatch beats, so you know, decimalization divided by 10.

And this was actually to promote a digital watch that they were rolling out. And like it wasn't a serious proposal, but it's actually still up on their website, if you look for it. Oh, wow. Ultimately, like I have been thinking a lot about this. And maybe there is a good argument for using base 10 for our timekeeping. 10 hours, 100 minutes, it's very clean, it's very rational, but I don't think this proposal

takes into account how stubborn people are, and also the fact that humans just don't work that way. We are not clean and rational beings. We're going to force our world of mechanics and digitalization and logical thinking upon poor little humans who are illogical, they don't think logically, they have emotions and all that. And no wonder it didn't catch on because logic is wonderful for the intellectuals who live in their little towers. But not for the everyday person who wants to come on to buy high-go to friends.

Do they behave logically? No, we have these wonderful breakfasts. They know what's important, it was not important, they enjoy life. Yes, that sounds very true and very sort of our experience with design is like, you can have big lofty ideas, but in the end when it's sort of drafted

on our silly and capricious world, it just does not work. Yeah, exactly right. Thanks you for always bringing us up, you know, silly and kind of profound ideas all in one package. Of course, thanks Roman, and it's my pleasure. I just wanted to say before we go a big thank you to Don Norman He has a new book that just came out earlier this year called Design for a Better World. And I will say, it is very much worth your time. Okay, all about it.

Okay, sounds good. Thanks Chris. Thanks Robin. So I'm in the studio with Digital Director and 99% Invisible City co-author Kurt Colstad Hey Kurt! Hey Roman, how's it going? It's good, it's our favorite time of the year, it's many stories time, what many stories do you have for us?

So as you know, I got my graduate degree in architecture, but I have something for you that you might not know in common with some of the most famous architects in modern history, including the Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, which is that even with my degree, I was never qualified to actually strictly speaking be a practicing architect. Well, why would probably hope that for you, you wouldn't be a practicing architect. Well, why would probably hope that for you, you wouldn't be a practicing architect without maybe some licensing or qualifications beyond your degree, but I did not know that

about Kaboose A or Frank Lloyd Wright. Yeah, all right. There's accreditation and tests you have to take, but neither right nor corbou sat for their exam. Okay, so they didn't take the test or whatever, but like, did they actually study architecture? Yeah, not exactly so much that either, because the corbousee studied decorative arts

and right did take some engineering classes, but that was about it. Wow, I mean, I guess I read that about Franklin Wright, but I just cannot believe that he wasn't technically qualified to be an architect. Yeah, right. I mean, he's a guy who, even the AIA said, like, is the greatest American architect,

and here he is, not really qualified to be an architect. And that wasn't that uncommon. Some designers don't want to study for that test or get the prerequisite work requirements or meet those continuing Ed requirements. And learning on the job as an apprentice used to be a much more common path into architectural design. But to legally call yourself an architect, you have to jump through the legal hoops.

Yeah. And that makes sense to me because you can't have just unlicensed non-architects out there designing buildings. That's whatever. You know, like, it would make me never want to go into a building again if I thought about this too deeply. So totally, right? Yeah. And there are workarounds. For one thing, if a building is small enough, it might not need an architect. Most houses don't. But big buildings, yeah, they do. And in some cases, like this one firm I worked at out of college, there may be only a few licensed architects

on staff, and part of their job is to look at and sign off on official drawings made by other designers. But there is this one famous architect, well, non-architect, who is a personal favorite designer of mine, who also didn't have a degree, and on top of that, he eventually got into trouble for practicing without one. And his name was Carlos Scarpa,

and he was a 20th century Italian designer who, despite his lack of credentials, nonetheless worked in one of the richest, historical, urban environments in the world, his hometown of Venice. Oh, I love Venice. I just went to Venice for the world, his hometown of Venice. Oh, I love Venice. I just went to Venice for the first time. It's amazing.

It does look like maybe non-architects put Venice together. Totally, right? Yeah, very much a-a-created over time. And so, yeah, and he's sort of like this all-world tour, a Louis Con figure, who, like, he was a modernist, but more of a regional modernist, and he he was a modernist, but more of a regional modernist, and he wasn't a modernist in the sense of white walls and flat surfaces that you think of when you think of that era of design, he was known for adding his own creative and often

quite bold and eccentric design details to this rich historical context. And his work on historical buildings was arguably very subjective. It was loaded with his own personal style, his own interpretations. Okay, so describe a little bit more of what that looks like. Well, Scarpa was known for taking a lot of creative liberties. Like he'd peel back parts of walls and floors to create these virtual windows into the past.

And in something like a museum renovation, for example, he wouldn't just put up blank white walls, like you might picture in like a normal museum, he'd take, say, a sculpture and say, hey, let's put this on a 10 foot pedestal. And I'll design that too. Oh, and that'll paint the wall behind it in this particular color, which I'll pick,

and it'll face in this direction with the sunlight coming in this way and so on. So he really like controlled that experience and much like our friends, the Corbusier and right. This guy with all of his creativity, all of his great ideas, didn't have a license, but he was at least a little closer than they were in some ways for what it's worth. What do you mean by that?

Well, he was educated in architecture at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts, but then he, like me, stopped short of actually taking the exam. You know, the one that would have secured him a license to become a legally practicing architect. So despite at least having some kind of the right degree, he managed to run a foul of the law, and at one point, after he'd been designing buildings for years, he was sued by the Venice Order of Architects, poor practicing architecture without a license. Wow, okay, that seems like a big deal, like presumably, like, he wouldn't be able

to build buildings anymore of that if he was found guilty or something like that. Like his professional life was on the line. Yeah, pretty high stakes, right? Yeah. But then something remarkable happened. As the story goes, when the case wound up in front of the judge, it was in a courtroom that Scarpa himself had designed. Right. And you know, it sounds really far-fetched, but if you think about it, I mean, finish isn't that big of a city, right? That's not it.

Oh, it's not possible. So, okay, so describe this courtroom domain. This is amazing. The thing is, it wasn't grand or ostentatious, but it was executed with a lot of care for details, which is really what Scarpa was all about. Here, check it out. Okay, let me take a look at this thing.

Yes, okay, so what I see here is it is pretty modern. It doesn't have like the high ceilings of a lot of like Italian architecture does. It's lots of wood, lots of straight lines. It looks like the office of a minstead tree modern building. It's it's it's lovely. Yeah, yeah. And it's all about like it's not too over the top, right? Yeah, it is pretty elegant and simple overall with these laminated wood seats and desks with expressive joinery, but it's the little things as usual where his design stand out, like

the door knobs at the entryway, which are geometric and complex, sort of like or neat little modernist sculptures. And like, say, Alvarale tale, a lot of attention is paid to where people will touch the design, right? Like the wood where you run your fingers along the chair or the banister. So set this scene for me. He's in court trying to defend himself for practicing architecture without a license. He ends up being tried in a room that he designed, sitting there with a judge. He's sitting in the chair. He designed with its nice joinery and all. What happens? Well, apparently he didn't have to do a lot of work to defend himself because the judge

sort of sat there and looked around the room and reckoned that Skarp seemed like a pretty good architect as far as he could tell. And so he dismissed the case. That's amazing. Right? He's like exhibit A and the adjusters, broadly. And to add to that, I read that the lawyer who was representing Scarpa was also so impressed that he ended up hiring Scarpa to design his own house too. That's amazing. Okay, so so he wins because of the great example that he's sitting in and he keeps practicing architecture like what what does he end up doing after that? So he kept up this sort of signature creativity in this orientation towards detail

and this kind of quirky charm even up until he died at the age of 72. And I kind of after as well, even after he died. Oh, what do you mean by after he died? Well, he designed his own burial plot, for example, and he incorporated this kind of drainage hole into the lid of the coffin cover. And visitors were encouraged to come share a glass of wine with him after he had passed away. You know, by basically pouring one down into this drink and giving him a drink and then having their own drink. And in any case, I just think it's really charming like how he was really creative up to and through the end. That's amazing. Right? I like this guy. Yeah, he is fantastic.

I mean, if you're ever in Venice, you should really go and pour one out for the guy. Yeah, or pour one on him, I guess. Yeah, pour one on him as it were. That's amazing. I love it. I love it. Well, this is such a great story. Thank you so much, Kurt.

Thank you, Roman. So I'm here with Delaney Hall. Hey Delaney, what's your mini story? Hey Roman, so recently Kurt was telling me about a phenomenon called ghost kitchens. I had never heard of this before. And it kind of exploded my whole idea about what a restaurant even is in this time. And it was very confusing experience researching these things. And so that's what I'd like to talk with you about today. Okay, okay. Let's start with what you found. Like what is a ghost kitchen? So ghost kitchens have a few names. They're sometimes known as dark kitchens or virtual kitchens, cloud kitchens. And they're a relatively new trend

in the restaurant industry that seem to really take off during the pandemic. That was because of the popularity of delivery services like DoorDash and UberEats. And the basic idea is that they are kitchens that specialize in delivery only. They do not have a storefront, they do not have servers, they do not have a place, you can walk in and sit down, they only sell food through delivery apps. And I can totally see why this cropped up during the pandemic because the first like hardest thing to do in this world is to run a restaurant with a storefront and then all

of a sudden your crowds are gone because you can't pack them in there because of COVID, but still people need to eat and so they are only doing delivery and if you're being delivered food, who cares if it's from a restaurant with a storefront or not. Yeah, there is totally an economic logic to it. But how do they work? How do you set one up? So there are a few different types of ghost kitchens. One type is a kitchen that makes food for a bunch of different quote unquote restaurants

that all have different identities and names. And those restaurants are basically hanging their digital shingle out on services like DoorDash or UberEats. And they might appear to be different restaurants, but the reality is that all of their food is cooked in the same ghost kitchen. And it's pretty interesting. There can be a lot of delivery only restaurants

that are all actually part of the same ghost kitchen operation. So as an example, I watched this video by Eddie Burback. He's a comedian and a YouTuber who did, I have to say, this is surprisingly deep dive investigation into ghost kitchens. And he basically scanned delivery apps looking for restaurants in LA that all listed the same address. And he found that there were a whopping 44 different restaurants that all shared the same location,

which is a real tip off that you're dealing with the Ghost Kitchens. Wow. And there was this other curious thing that Eddie Burback discovered, which is that these delivery apps, they often give the feeling of a lot of variety. Like there's lots of different logos and restaurant names. But the funny thing is that sometimes those places all seem to be making the same food. And the way he discovered this is that Eddie started looking at the menu items from supposedly different restaurants that were all based at the same location.

And he found that they all seem to have the exact same beer battered cod sandwich. Like, it's all the same picture. It's all the same praise, the exact same description, which is a beer battered, North Atlantic cod, Slaw, Red and White cabbage,

Lemon, Urb, Aole, and a Brioche bun. And a Brioche bun. So I looked at another obvious choice at the same address, at a sunset beach fish and chips, and would you look at that? There's a beer-battered con sandwich for 1695 that is a beer-battered North Atlantic cod, slaw, red and white cabbage, lemon, herb-eoli, and a brioche bun. Interesting! Two separate restaurants on Uber Eats

appearing to be completely separate businesses selling the same item with the same description for the same price. So I looked at another place that had a beard-battered cot for $16.95, same description. And I looked at another place. And he finds that, like, again and again. And so Eddie ends up ordering nine seemingly identical cod sandwiches from supposedly nine different restaurants, but they're all based at the same location. That is very weird. So weird. And it makes you wonder why a single ghost kitchen would market the exact same sandwich, but make it appear to come from all these different restaurants, right?

The way that it makes sense to me is that the way you use those apps, you sort of go into a restaurant and you explore it. It's not like you're necessarily looking for a cod sandwich and then you're comparing across restaurants. Almost like you're in a restaurant itself trying to decide. And so if they want to sell that cod sandwich and they have lots of cod sandwiches available to be sold, it makes sense to put them in, you know, as many restaurants as it seems appropriate. Nine seems excessive. Yeah, I think the whole thing has a kind of flood the zone feeling to me. Like, yeah, totally.

If someone's wanting a cod sandwich, the chance of them picking a cod sandwich from your kitchen goes up if you're offering the same sandwich, but nine times. And so, yeah, there's just a quality of these restaurants that feels like it has sort of tech optimization vibes. It's like they're trying to SEO hack these delivery apps. And, you know, that's not surprising because many of these ghost kitchens are owned by tech startups. Oh, okay. They're not actually like some new form of restaurant. They really are just another form of tech. Yeah. And in a lot of ways, like, I think you can find

an individual owner of ghost kitchens, but there are big players involved with deep connections to the tech industry. So Travis Kalanick, the former chief executive of Uber, has been working on cloud kitchens, which is a ghost kitchen startup. Or there's also reef technology, a startup that includes multi brand kitchens.

This is very much a world where restaurants meet tech. And this trend is also intersecting with traditional brick and mortar restaurants in interesting ways. So there's another type of ghost kitchen I'll tell you about. And it actually runs out of existing restaurants. Okay, tell me more about those. So what's happened is that some of the most popular chain restaurants out there, and these are places with actual restaurants you can eat in, they've decided to cash in on this trend. And what some of them have done is they've created

new delivery only restaurant brands that they are running out of their existing chain kitchens. restaurant brands that they are running out of their existing chain kitchen. But it is not always clear to consumers that the delivery only brand is affiliated with that chain. So I thought to show you like how confusing this can be that it might be fun to give you a little quiz. Are you down for that? Totally. I'm going to do that. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to name the Ghost Kitchen Identity. And then I want you to try and guess which major restaurant chain runs it. Okay. Okay. So the first Ghost Kitchen brand is Pascuali's pizza and wings. Which major chain do you think runs it? Um, I'm gonna say dominoes. It's good guess. That is that is not the answer. That was a good guess.

The answer is Chuck E. Cheese. Oh, no. Oh, my. Isn't that so clever? Because if you went on a delivery app like you rolling in Mars and you were looking for pizza, would you order it from Chuck E.G. No way. Would you perhaps order it from Pascualis? It's certainly infinitely more possible than me ordering from Chuck E.G. Oh, this is great. It, this is funny. Have another one. Yes, yes, I do. Okay. So the next ghost kitchen brand is called pardon my cheese steak, which major chain runs pardon my cheese steak. Pardon my cheese steak. I don't know of any major chain that sells cheese steaks. This must be like a, wow.

Like Arbis? No, it is actually IHOP, the international house of pancakes. Whoa, okay. Yes. Wow. And it is not the only ghost kitchen brand that IHOP runs. They also do thrilled cheese, super mega dilla, and tender fix.

Wow. I am totally shocked by all of this. This is amazing to me. It's like this opportunity for chain restaurants that have a very fixed identity. It allows them to kind of come up with these surprising alter egos. It's like a chance to reach radically different markets

than the ones that you might actually reach through your brick and mortar restaurant. So you can essentially disguise who's behind a certain operation and all the connotations of a place like I have, you know? And all the animatronic robots. And you can hide those fine, the curtain. Yeah. Okay, so so far we've covered Ghost Kitchens robots and you can hide those fine the curtain.

Yeah. Okay, so so far we've covered Ghost Kitchens operating multiple delivery only brands out of one commercial space. And we've covered big restaurant chains who've developed these delivery only alter egos, but there's one last example of a Ghost K kitchen that I wanted to share with you because this is the one that sort of like broke my brain. I learned about this one from that Eddie Burback video I mentioned. And are you familiar with Mr. Beast, the YouTuber?

I'm familiar with the name Mr. Beast. I've never seen a Mr. Beast video, but I mentioned to my kids at some point something about Mr. Beast. I've never seen a Mr. Beast video, but I mentioned to my kids at some point, something about Mr. Beast, and they were completely just jaw on the floor that I'd never really heard of or seen Mr. Beast or what Mr. Beast was about. For those who aren't aware, he is a hugely popular YouTuber. He's known for doing over-the-top stunts and charity stuff, he'll get like 200 million views on a video called, I ate the world's largest slice of pizza. This is the largest slice of pizza in the entire world. Look how long it is.

This pizza is literally six feet until it's so loud. That's the basic volume of like 99% of it. And a few years back, he got into the ghost kitchen game. So he teamed up with virtual dining concepts, which is a company in the ghost kitchen space. And they launched a virtual restaurant brand called Mr. Beastburger. And so was this a traditional like ghost kitchen operation?

Yeah, it is. And I'll get into how it actually works. But first there was this interesting thing, which is that to drum up support for Mr. Beast Burger and to get his millions of subscribers excited about it, Mr. Beast launched the concept with an actual brick and mortar restaurant that he set up in Wilson, North Carolina. So it had signs, it had branding, and it looked like a traditional fast food restaurant. I opened up the world's first free restaurant, and if that wasn't enough, I also paid people to eat at my restaurant. We haven't even opened

yet, and the police just told us to head to shut down a mile of traffic and there's a thousand cars in law. And this was a total stunt just to get attention, which seemed to work. But the interesting thing about this pop-up restaurant that he created is that it is not at all indicative of how Mr. Beastburger's actually work as a business because Mr. Beastberger is actually a ghost operation, so it's a delivery only restaurant chain which operates out of partner kitchens. Okay, so how does a partner kitchen relate to a ghost kitchen?

So as an example, I searched for Mr. Beastberger in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is like the nearest big city to me. And I found one. It was listed at an address. And when I searched for that address, it appeared to be a Bucadibepo Italian chain. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Wow.

So Bucadibepo, they partnered with Mr. Beast to provide the Mr. Beast burger experience to the fine people of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Absolutely, yeah. So this is like another subtle twist on how these things work. And the pitch that Mr. Beastburger made when it launched in 2020, again,

it was the height of the pandemic, restaurants were struggling, and the idea was basically, here, we are going to hand you another revenue stream. This wildly popular YouTuber has all of these fans. They want Mr. Beast burgers, and you can sign up to be one of the providers making those burgers in your already established

restaurant kitchen. Yeah, yeah. And Mr. Beast tried to make the menu simple so that it would suit lots of different kinds of restaurant kitchens. They wouldn't need new equipment. They wouldn't need special training. And so all these partnering restaurants have to do is make the burgers and then share the profits with Mr. Beast and virtual dining concepts.

His partner is setting up the business. Right, right. To this business overall workout the business. Right. Right. To this business overall, work out for Mr. Beast. It's interesting because there are more than a thousand locations listed on the Mr. Beast Burger website. But I think this example highlights one of the tricky elements of being a virtual restaurant. And it's the fact that because Mr. Beast has outsourced all of the food

buying and making two partner restaurants, quality control has been an issue. Some customers have had really good experiences with burgers, but other people have had bad experiences. So, I've seen that people have complained about the presentation being bad, about burgers arriving and random packaging. Like it doesn't look like a Mr. Beast burger. And then there's worse stuff too. Like some people have said they were delivered uncooked food or burgers on moldy buns. And this is actually escalated into Mr. Beast's suing virtual dining concepts, and then them suing him back.

Oh my god, okay. Wow, that's fascinating. Yeah, it's still, it's an evolving realm. You know, there's some kings to be worked out. Well, I mean, there's something about the accountability of a place in physical space that is important, especially when you're talking about something as sort of fundamental as food. Yeah, I think what's interesting about it is that there does seem to be something deceptive about the whole ghost kitchen concept. Like, my old-fashioned expectation of a restaurant

is that it is a place, staffed by people who are trained to create a particular kind of food, that there's just this single integrated entity responsible for the quality of what I'm about to eat. And with ghost kitchens, it's just different. Like, it might be a commercial kitchen appearing to be lots of different, quote unquote, restaurants. It might be a Chuck E. Cheese masquerading as a Pusquale's. It might be an Italian chain, like making my burger and slapping a Mr. Beast sticker on it.

Yeah, it's very unusual. It's just a strange new world. Well, I'll be on the lookout because now I'm like gonna be really curious as to what I'm actually ordering from and they said an actual restaurant or not. Thank you so much for letting me appreciate. You're welcome. Thanks for having me and we'll make sure to post some of the videos we mentioned in our conversation on the website. Absolutely. We are indebted to Eddie Burback. Thanks for taking us on. [♪ Music playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background Our next story is from Friend of the Show, LaVar Burton. He's got a new fiction podcast for kids and families called Sound Detectives, and it

plays an inventor who helps an unlikely pair of detectives return stolen sounds to the world. But today he's here with a true story about a lost sound. Here's Levar. I have a rather intriguing story to share about an enormous archaic instrument called the Tell Harmonium. For a monthly fee, you could simply pick up your phone and hear an entire orchestral performance. Only it wasn't an orchestra. It was a single instrument doing its best impression of an orchestra. Sadly, this marvel was never recorded, and it its sound has been lost to history. It all begins with the telharmoniums inventor, the ever-curious, fattiest K-Hill.

K-Hill was reserved, studious, and incredibly smart. As early as 13, he was experimenting with music sent over telephone wires, an idea that would later become the tellharmonium. When he was just 18 years old, he filed his first patent. And he more would follow as he worked to improve devices like typewriters and pipe organs. This was just the start for K-Hill. He soon set his ambitions higher to develop a machine that could meticulously control the very shape of a sound wave. While other instruments used air or strings to produce their tones, K-Hill turned to something new, electricity. He began working on the ultimate instrument which K-. Hill patented in 1897 when he was 30 years old.

This instrument would be able to perfectly replicate any other sound on Earth. The telharmonium was massive. It looked less like a grand piano or a cello, and like a power plant with 200 tons of large steel boxes and wires. It was a machine designed to play with the building blocks of sound. You can think of it like a painter's palette. The fundamental note is like a primary color. Think red, blue, or yellow.

Overtones are much quieter notes that play alongside the fundamental. These are the subtle shades that give depth and complexity. Each instrument accentuates different overtones, giving you different sounds. This is part of why a piano sounds different than a violin, even if they're playing the same note. K-Hill wanted to choose and shape exactly which overtones we were hearing, allowing him to recreate any musical instrument he desired. He started with sine waves, the absolute purist form of sound.

They contained no overtones, just the fundamental note. The telharmonium used tone waves, massive cogs that spin at the frequency of the pitch to create these sign waves. Each note of the telharmonium had a tone wheel for the fundamental note, and up to 20 more for the overtones. This was all made a few years before the amplifier, meaning the telharmonium had to create an electrical current so strong that it wouldn't need to be amplified. To make that many notes that loudly required a large and expensive machine. K. Hill built a prototype and organized a demonstration. He played Handel's Largo for an audience of potential investors.

While we can't play you an actual recording, we imagine it sounded something like this. The businessmen were amazed. With his project funded, Kay Hill constructed a full-scale telharmonium at his factory in Hollywood, New Jersey. It cost around $200,000, over $7 million, when adjusted for inflation. After its completion, the Telharmonium was shipped from K. Hills, New Jersey factory to its new home in Manhattan. It was set up in a building across from the Metropolitan Opera House, called Telharmonic Hall. The machines' mechanics were housed in the basement connected by wires to keyboards in the auditorium. The debut of Tell Harmonic Hall in 1906 was a roaring success.

Demand was so high they doubled their daily shows and had to open up the basement to fit more visitors. One notable fan of the Telharmonium was author Mark Twain, who wrote, Every time I see or hear a new wonder like this, I have to postpone my death right off. I couldn't possibly leave the world until I have heard this again and again. Part of Cale's plan was a bold new idea, a musical subscription service.

Tell harmonic wires were strung up alongside telephone wires and subscribers could pay a monthly fee to listen at home on their phones. And, at least one hotel was constructed with tellic service available in every room. However, despite its novelty, there were a number of problems that plagued the tellharmonium. While some described it as pure of pitch and with a soothing quality, others complained that it was rather crude and lacking in variety. It was also hard to play, requiring two people to operate keyboards that were completely different from a piano or an organ.

The business was impossible to scale. Each new subscriber required more electrical power. Eventually, the only way to keep up with demand would be to build an even bigger machine. The phone companies weren't too happy either. The teleharmonic music and regular phone calls ran on neighboring wires, and a much stronger teleharmonium signal would loudly bleed over and provide unexpected background music. In one anecdote, a woman suspected her husband was lying and calling from some concert hall instead of his office. All of these challenges were made even worse by the financial crisis of 1907. Subscriptions fell, and the attendance was so low

that the Tell Harmonic Hall dropped performances to just once a day. The final show at Tell Harmonic Hall was on February 16, 1908. It's bright but brief time in the spotlight, lasting not quite two years. K. Hill tore down the telharmonium and retreated back to Hollywood. He began working on a cheaper and more efficient third model. In 1911, K. Hill spent five months disassembling, transporting and reconstructing this third telharmonium in New York, this time connecting it to Carnegie Hall. It received little fanfare.

Both the press and the public were no longer interested in dial-up music thanks to a new invention. The radio. What? What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? What's your name? A few years later, Kay Hill's company filed for bankruptcy with over $100,000 in debt, nearly $3 million today. All three tell harmoniums were eventually sold for scrap. K-heal died in 1934. That same year, the Hammond organ was invented, which used tone wheels coupled with newly developed amplifiers to make a similar and much more manageable instrument. It also used overtones to imitate pipe organs, but at a fraction of the sides. It was intended for churches, but then broke out as a staple of rock, soul, and blues music. While the sound of the telharmonium may have disappeared, its influence can still be seen

today. Synthesizers and other electronic instruments have made it easy to have an entire orchestra at your fingertips. Still, I can't help but imagine the enchanting sound of the tale harmonium. If you and your kids want to help Lavar find missing sounds, be sure to check out his new podcast Sound Detectives. You'll meet Detective Hunch and Audie, a literal walking and talking human ear, and you may also hear a familiar voice, let's just say I think I'd be a pretty good flight attendant. The first season of Sound Detectives is out now, wherever you get your podcasts.

99% Invisible With Produced This Week by Chris Perubek Delaney Hall, Kurt Coleset, and Talent Stratley. Mixed in Sound Design by Martin Gonzales. Music by Swan Rial and Martin Gonzales. Editing by Kelly Prime. Additional production by Jacob Moltenon Medina and Sarah Baik. Fact checking by Graham Haysha. Kethe 2 is our executive producer, the rest of the team, includes Christopher Johnson, Emmett Fitzgerald, Vivian Leigh, Jason Dillion, Lashemadon, Joe Rosenberg, Gabriella Gladney,

and me Roman Mars. The 99% of his below-go was created by Stefan Lawrence. Special thanks to Lavar Burton, Julia Smith, Isabelle Redmond Dolce, and Josephine Marta Rana. We are a part of this Stitcher and Sirius XM podcast family, now a headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building. And beautiful. Uptown, Oakland, California.

You know what's really beautiful about Oakland right now? The Oakland Roots Soccer Club. Other teams come and go, but the Roots are Oakland first, always. We're on all the usual social media sites, but why spend your time doom scrolling there when you could visit somewhere good instead? 99pi.org. See you next year.

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