99% Invisible

Every time I tell my colleagues I study Las Vegas, I get a few frowns.

Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, when it was first published in France, was reviewed and written of as a parable about Beaux Brummel and a parable about syphilis.

His most famous piece is probably 4 minutes 33 seconds, during which the performer is supposed to sit silent for 4 minutes and 33 seconds while the audience listens to whatever sounds are in the room.

It was known as the Silver Book Plan and it was essentially to raise Skid Row, kick everyone out, bulldoze buildings, start fresh.

We developed what's called the Blue Book Plan.

The Blue Book Plan was this: to contain the spread of Skid Row. It's basically what's called the Containment Plan.

Eric J. Dolan is the author of "A Furious Sky: The 500-Year History of America's Hurricanes"

And a lot of that, as I describe in the book, really had to do with the condescending attitude the American meteorologists had towards their fellow meteorologists

This experience inspired Jake to write "The Lost Subways of North America", a book about the subways of our past present and future and why public transit in so many of our cities fall way short of our needs.

In his book Jake doesn't just write about subways, he also looks at buses streetcars commuter rail and basically all types of urban public transportation.

Jake's book is called "The Lost Subways of North America", a cartographic guide to the past present and what might have been.

Not only will you find great stories about the subways of North America, it also features beautiful transit maps that Jake illustrated himself.

Steve Lado is the author of the book the great American jetpack Anything that can give you an advantage in war is something your military wants

Steve told me it is very common to find stories like this online

Steve did not get to go to the museum, but he sent someone to take photos

They made it a concerted effort to get these things into the media not just in front of newspaper reporters But on camera on television so as an episode of Gilligan's Island where Gilligan finds a jetpack

There was a bit of over promising going on Newspaper reporters would say these things are on the horizon We've got one doing this now and pretty soon we'll be doing that and we don't know where that stretch came from

I wrote a book about Television and I'm a poet. I write poetry now. So yeah, that's what I do.

Did you ever write any poems about howdy-doody? No, never wrote a poem about howdy-doody nor will I ever?

We all thought that carbonara had existed forever and ever since the Middle Ages.

Today any Italian will tell you that carbonara is a pasta coated in a sauce made from guanciale, raw beaten eggs, pecorino romano cheese and black pepper.

And Luca what would happen if you went into a restaurant or any Nona's house in Italy today and said I would like traditional carbonara with chopped clams please.

They would literally take you straight to a madhouse they would put you in restraints and carry you out to a madhouse.

For decades cream was another common addition to carbonara even though Luca says most Italians today would clutch their cannolis at the thought.

Vincenzo even teaches me my new favorite Italian word the word for crunchy crocante it even sounds crunchy.

As I leave Vincenzo asked me what hotel I'm staying at he would later drop off a copy of an Italian mystery novel called spaghetti al assassina in which a fictional inventor of the dish is murdered.

It's the fifth in a series of books featuring Bari's most dogged detective Inspector Lolita Lobosco it's an Italian so I'm probably not going to read it but I love it.

I'm about to eat my way across Rome with food writer Katie Parla, an American who's been living in Italy for 20 years.

She's written multiple cookbooks about Italian cuisine and gives food tours, including to folks like Stanley Tucci, Andrew Zimmern, and Action Bronson on their TV shows.

Special thanks to Katie Parla for showing me around Rome and schooling me on Italian history her most recent cookbook is Food of the Italian Islands

Chantral Lewis is author of the book Dandelion, The Black Dandy and Street Style, which features the Sappours.

Black men have taken the European suit and fashioned it with traditional African sensibilities.

In one of Papa Wimba's songs, Aisa Nazoa, he has a line that's become like a creed to the sapours.

What was he like?

Well dressed, well shaved, well perfumed.

And the thing about the 1912 plan is it really works. And if they really did thrive as a tourist destination for decades, but you know, modernism and more and more modern buildings were beginning to encroach. They were selling the traditional style that the tourism boosters were trying to preserve.

Like there's preservation of like Monticello and like old houses and things like this. But this was like the idea of preserving the architectural style of a whole city.

Check out Barry Kernfeld's books, Pop Song Piracy and the story of fake books.

This is Walt Hickey, data journalist and author of a new book called You Are What You Watch.

I say that You Are What You Watch because obviously it's alluding to the idea that you are what you eat. But I was just kind of consistently struck how often I found people whose lives were meaningfully or permanently changed by a thing that they watched or people who encountered an idea that ended up changing the course of their lives.

In your book, I was fascinated by the strange connection between violence in the movies and violence in the real world. I grew up in an era where there was this notion that violent movies get people riled up and then they go out and commit crimes. And I was actually surprised to know that there's a little kernel of truth in that. I always thought it was just complete nonsense. But you also say that violent movies can actually bring crime down. Can you tell me that story?

The book is so much fun. People are going to have so much fun reading it.

Walt Hickey's book is out now. It's called You Are What You Watch. How movies and TV affect everything. It's got cool charts. It's got pictures. It's got short stories that you'll love. Probably one touching on your favorite movie franchise. You should definitely check it out.