Episodes

• 2021

• American Slow Radio

  Let's get slow. Producer Abby Wendle picks up the gauntlet that was thrown down in the last episode "<a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/05/19/998228413/the-great-narrative-escape">The Great Narrative Escape</a>." Sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.
  June 12, 2021

  42 min

• The Great Narrative Escape

  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.
  May 20, 2021

  59 min

• The Chaos Machine: A Looping Revolt

  Is <em>209 Times </em>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 long-standing tug of war over who owns the truth.
  May 13, 2021

  48 min

• The Chaos Machine: Wrathful Lord

  The man behind <em>209 Times</em> 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.
  May 6, 2021

  51 min

• The Chaos Machine: An Endless Hole

  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 say it's spreading hateful lies about progressive leaders. In part 1 of The Chaos Machine series, what happens when traditional local news runs out of resources and reporting the narrative of a community is anybody's game?
  April 29, 2021

  41 min

• Eat The Rich

  Invisibilia explores a social experiment with money, focused around a contentious topic: reparations. What happens when you demand white people give up their wealth?
  April 22, 2021

  53 min

• Season 7: New Stories. New Hosts.

  Invisibilia is back! Stories that help you see the world differently, with new hosts Kia Miakka Natisse and Yowei Shaw.
  April 19, 2021

  5 min
• 2020

• Trust Fall

  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 us. What happens when you no longer know how to trust?
  June 13, 2020

  48 min

• Two Heartbeats A Minute

  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 good idea. | To learn more about this episode, subscribe to our newsletter. Click here to learn more about NPR sponsors.
  April 10, 2020

  69 min

• White v. White?

  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 man whose racial identity was fiercely contested... and the consequences this had on an entire city. | To learn more about this episode, subscribe to our newsletter. Click here to learn more about NPR sponsors.
  April 3, 2020

  63 min

• An Unlikely Superpower

  What if you had a superpower that allowed you to see part of the world that was to come? At the age of 60, a Scottish woman named Joy Milne discovers she has a biological gift that allows her to see things that will happen in the future that no one else can see. A look at how we think about the future, and the important ways the future shapes the present. | To learn more about this episode, subscribe to our newsletter. Click here to learn more about NPR sponsors.
  March 27, 2020

  53 min

• The Confrontation

  Welcome to what is possibly the most tense and uncomfortable summer program in America! The Boston-based program aims to teach the next generation the real truth about race, and may provide some ideas for the rest of us about the right way to confront someone to their face. | To learn more about this episode, subscribe to our newsletter. Click here to learn more about NPR sponsors.
  March 22, 2020

  54 min

• The Reluctant Immortalist

  Daniel Martinez discovered the unthinkable: a creature that breaks one of the most fundamental laws of life. In the wake of his discovery--which has been widely confirmed by the scientific community--all kinds of people have thrown themselves into trying to unlock the secrets of how this creature seems to cheat death. Cellular biologists, aging researchers, and the biotech industry all hold high hopes that there may be some application to slow human aging. Millions of dollars are being poured into the dream of extending the human lifespan, which looks increasingly possible. But Daniel? He trashed his experiment. He completely abandoned the pursuit of unlocking the secrets of immortality. Perhaps because he believes that dream is all wrong. Invisibilia co-founder Lulu Miller went down to visit him in California to try to find out why. Please take our short, anonymous listener survey: npr.org/invisibiliasurvey. | To learn more about this episode, subscribe to our newsletter. Click here to learn more about NPR sponsors.
  March 16, 2020

  46 min

• The Last Sound

  Bernie Krause was a successful musician as a young man, playing with rock stars like Jim Morrison and George Harrison in the 1960s and '70s. But then one day, Bernie heard a sound unlike anything he'd ever encountered and it completely overtook his life. He quit the music business to pursue it and has spent the last 50 years following it all over the earth. And what he's heard raises this question: what can we learn about ourselves and the world around us if we quiet down and listen? | To learn more about this episode, subscribe to our newsletter. Click here to learn more about NPR sponsors.
  March 8, 2020

  46 min

• Season 6 Trailer

  You hear the train barreling towards you and you're tied to the tracks. It's an impossible situation. Most people would panic, and then a tiny handful would think up improbable workarounds. This season on Invisibilia: inventors in desperate times.
  March 2, 2020

  2 min
• 2019

• VIDEO: The (Future) Friendship Machine

  A special gift during this season of giving: An original animated video in two parts! Part 1 explores a small but strange study about a machine that could predict human friendships. Then, in collaboration with fictionalist Ian Chillag <em>(Everything Is Alive),</em> we ask, What would the machine have to say about all of this, if it could talk? If you are having trouble viewing the video, you can watch it at npr.org/invisibilia. And, if you want to reciprocate this little gift, don't forget to donate to your NPR station before the end of the year at donate.npr.org/invis.
  December 20, 2019

  9 min

• Raising Devendra

  What happens when you treat artificial intelligence with unconditional love?
  December 17, 2019

  31 min

• Love and Lapses

  Producer B.A. Parker started recording her calls with her father because she was concerned about the care at his nursing home. But the recordings gave her a window into something very different: their relationship. So she started recording her calls with her grandmother as well. A story of relationships told through the small recorded calls between people who love each other.
  November 22, 2019

  17 min

• Back When I Was Older

  As a parent, what do you do when your four-year-old starts telling you about memories that can't possibly be his? Memories that he says are from a past life?
  October 25, 2019

  21 min

• Rough Translation: Liberté, Égalité and French Fries

  Alix presents a new episode from NPR's Rough Translation about residents of an immigrant neighborhood in Marseille, France who considered their local McDonalds to be a home of sorts, so when the owner tries to sell it, they take extreme measures to try and save it.
  October 18, 2019

  47 min