SPEAKER_05: Every kid learns differently, so it's really important that your children have the educational support that they need to help them keep up and excel. If your child needs homework help, check out iXcel, the online learning platform for kids. iXcel covers math, language arts, science, and social studies through interactive practice problems from pre-K to 12th grade. As kids practice, they get positive feedback and even awards. With the school year ramping up, now is the best time to get iXcel. Our listeners can get an exclusive 20% off iXcel membership when they sign up today at iXcel.com slash invisible. That's the letters iXcel.com slash invisible. Squarespace is the all-in-one platform for building your brand and growing your business online. Stand out with a beautiful website, engage with your audience, and sell anything. Your products, content you create, and even your time. You can easily display posts from your social profiles on your website or share new blogs or videos to social media. Automatically push website content to your favorite channels so your followers can share it too. Go to squarespace.com slash invisible for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use the offer code invisible to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. The greatest mode of transportation is the funicular, which is a special kind of train pulled by a cable that runs up steep slopes. But you know, trains are great even when they're not going up treacherous terrain. I was in Union Station in Denver recently. This is one of the stops in the California Zephyr, which runs from Chicago to Emeryville, California. And I firmly believe if we introduced more beautiful stations to enhance the romance and more lines to enhance the utility of trains, they could become a key part of our infrastructure again here in the US like they are in so many other countries. My colleague Kirk Colestead is also into trains. So today he and I are going to talk about some of the most ambitious, fascinating and downright crazy train designs the world has ever seen.
SPEAKER_02: That's right, Roman. Today we're talking about trains, only trains and nothing but trains. All right, then all aboard.
SPEAKER_01: Greetings, passengers. This is your conductor speaking. Our first stop today is Crush, Texas. Crush, Texas.
SPEAKER_02: Back in the late 1800s, most of the land in Texas was pretty sparsely populated. So this huge state had vast stretches that were home to less than five people per square mile. And so trains were critical infrastructure, enabling some level of connectivity in these remote places. I mean, even now I think of a lot of Texas as being pretty thinly populated.
SPEAKER_05: So like, I sure I can imagine it was much less populated way back when.
SPEAKER_02: Right. So now picture this. One day in 1896, a town sprouted into existence and a remote part of this wide open state. But it was only temporary. For that day and that day only, it boasted the highest population of any city in Texas. And it was created by a regional rail company designed around a single event in which two trains would be rammed into each other at speed on purpose in front of tens of thousands of spectators.
SPEAKER_05: So let me ask you a question first to begin with them. Why did they want to crash two trains into each other other than that would be really, really cool?
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's the main reason, right? The place was called Crush, not because they were going to crush two trains together, as you might imagine. It was, and I swear I'm not making this up, actually named after a guy who came up with the idea to stage the crash, a man named William George Crush.
SPEAKER_05: It's like his calling was written into the stars. It was kind of an amazing eponym for the ages. Yeah, right? An actonym, as you would say.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. And William Crush worked for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad, or KT for short. And so Crush became the de facto name of this place that the railroad company built to house the event. And the collision event itself came to be called the Crash at Crush.
SPEAKER_04: The Crash at Crush. Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Wait, wait, wait. What day of the week was it?
SPEAKER_02: It was September 15th, 1896, which was actually a Tuesday. Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_04: Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday, Crash at the Crush. Your ticket will buy you the whole seat, but you'll only need the edge. Yeah, you know, I'm not sure there was seating, but yes, you've got the right idea.
SPEAKER_02: And one of the craziest things to me is that this wasn't even the first time a railroad company had staged and publicized a crash like this. Like I can't claim to be an expert here, but I don't know if inviting people to watch trains
SPEAKER_05: crashing spectacularly into each other is the best way to call attention to your railroad services. Like I'm sure you want people's association with train travel to be safety and comfort and convenience and things like that, not crashing.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right. It seems like a very odd choice, but the economy at the time wasn't doing great. And so the company was open to kind of new ideas about how to make money in other ways. Plus they had dozens of old decommissioned 50 ton locomotive engines that were basically just gathering dust. So in part they figured, hey, why not put these engines to some kind of good use? So it really is like a demolition derby.
SPEAKER_05: They're using old vehicles that they don't really care about. And except for, you know, unlike a demolition derby, there's only two vehicles competing and everyone crashes and everyone loses. Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_02: Everybody except the railroad company, assuming they can turn a profit. And they kind of cleverly decided to make attendance itself free, but people would still have to pay about a hundred dollars round trip in today's money to get to and from crush. And of course their trains were the best way to get there.
SPEAKER_05: And yeah, I see. And probably the only way to get there for most people because it's this remote location inside of rural Texas.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. This remote spot about 15 miles north of Waco where there was no town, no infrastructure, no anything really. And so they picked it in part because it was so remote and undeveloped. Plus this particular spot formed a kind of natural amphitheater.
SPEAKER_05: So they just led people out in the middle of nowhere, Texas, like some kind of turn of the 20th century, Fyre Fest. Here's your cheese sandwich and a mattress.
SPEAKER_02: Well, no, thankfully they were somewhat better prepared on the hospitality front. They drilled wells and they built a train station and laid down temporary tracks to bring in people and they catered food and they hired like a couple hundred cops to keep the peace. And all of this was done with the expectation that maybe like 25,000 people would show up, which is a lot. But in the end, an estimated 40,000 or so actually made it to the event.
SPEAKER_05: Wow. Okay. So I can totally see the appeal of this as a spectacle, but you know, I have to ask like, was it actually safe? I mean, you know, situating an audience next to two crashing trains seems more than a little bit dangerous.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. So it turns out the short answer is no, it was not safe. They had engineers saying it was safe, at least as long as people stayed far enough back, but ultimately it was very, very dangerous.
SPEAKER_05: So I'm, well, I'm almost afraid to find out, but in the end, how did Crash at Crash actually go down?
SPEAKER_02: It all started as planned. The trains were carefully brought together to meet in the middle to make kind of a photo operate and then they were backed up a couple of miles to their starting points. And then they were kicked into gear and the operators hopped off. That part went fine. Everybody got off safely and the trains got up to their target speeds, which was around 45 miles per hour. But at the point of impact, things literally went off the rails because both of the trains boilers exploded. And when they did, big chunks of metal and wood blasted up into the air and began raining down on the crowd. Three people were killed and a photographer from Waco who incidentally got some really great pictures, lost an eye. Oh my God.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, I know times were different then and maybe safety standards were different then, but did people just not see this coming or didn't care?
SPEAKER_02: They really believed they'd taken safety precautions to make it work. Like the train cars were all tightly chained together and spectators were instructed to stand 500 feet or so away. In the end, no one expected those boilers to blow.
SPEAKER_05: And with that huge a crowd, I would imagine there was like a lot of panic as well. It wasn't just people being killed by debris. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02: There was a lot of chaos at least at first and people were running away and screaming and doing everything you'd expect. But wildly enough, as the dust settled, they actually started running back towards the wreck to grab souvenirs and like take photos and things.
SPEAKER_05: But what about the people who were injured or even killed by debris? Like what happened with them?
SPEAKER_02: Well, eventually the railroad compensated them and their families with a combination of cash. And again, I'm not making this up, lifetime train tickets, which I don't know, just seems kind of tone deaf. Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.
SPEAKER_05: But, um, like I know something horrible happened, but was it viewed at the time as a catastrophe? Like you know, did the man with the plan, like Mr. Crush, um, did they hold him accountable for this horrific tragedy that maimed and killed people for the, you know, just for the sake of spectacle?
SPEAKER_02: Well, the railroad company fired him basically on the spot, but then they turned around and rehired him a day later because the media coverage wasn't actually that bad. Um, a lot of it seemed pretty positive overall. And so despite the tragic consequences of this event, the crash at Crush turned out to be a pretty good marketing campaign after all.
SPEAKER_05: Wow. Well, I guess that's what they say. There isn't such thing as bad press, huh?
SPEAKER_02: Depressing in this case, but yeah, true. And sure enough, that wasn't even the last event of its kind. For decades to come, crashing trains could be found at carnivals and state fairs across the country and Crush itself was such a sensation that it even inspired the king of ragtime, Scott Joplin, to write a song about it. The great Crush collision march.
SPEAKER_07: Well, that is a jolly little tune, maybe a little bit more upbeat than I was expecting
SPEAKER_05: from something inspired by a crash. Yeah, and I'm not sure if it's the way that it's being played in this case or just how
SPEAKER_02: our modern ears hear it, but he did make these notes in the composition for other musicians who could play this, specifically telling them how to replicate crashing train sounds with music. Today the temporary town of Crush is long gone, but train nerds can still visit the site and read a nearby plaque, which is dedicated to the crash at Crush.
SPEAKER_05: Always read the plaque.
SPEAKER_01: Next stop, Rome, Italy. This station is still under construction, so watch your step as you exit.
SPEAKER_02: When you think of Rome, you probably think of famous ancient buildings and ruins like the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Roman Forum, things like that. Right, right, of course. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The whole city of Rome is a treasure trove of historical artifacts and architecture, and tourists only see some of that because so much of it is still buried below the surface. But all of these wonderful subterranean layers of history to be uncovered have really made it hard for urban planners who are working to expand the city's metro network.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, it really does sound like a nightmare, like as they tunnel, they must run into artifacts all the time.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they do, especially near the surface. Once they get down to the depth where the lines actually run, tunneling horizontally tends to not be a big issue. But getting down there and building out the stations and ventilation and all that other near-surface infrastructure, that's where they have real problems. Yeah, so how do they get around it, like all those layers of history that are near the
SPEAKER_05: surface?
SPEAKER_02: Often, they can't. And these excavations almost invariably become archaeological digs. And in at least one case, the city abandoned a planned station entirely for preservation reasons. Huh.
SPEAKER_05: And so what happens then? Like, do you just dig somewhere else and try again?
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes, yeah. And as a result, these otherwise seemingly straightforward infrastructure projects often turn into these decades-long endeavors. And they even employ specially certified construction workers who are trained to double as archaeologists to make sure that when they encounter artifacts, everything gets handled properly.
SPEAKER_03: I found some gold rings. I found glasswork laminated in gold depicting a Roman god, some amphorae.
SPEAKER_02: And sometimes, they encounter truly incredible things. Like, not too long ago, they found a whole building complex dating back to the second century. And it was filled with marble floors, ornamental mosaics, painted frescas, the works. And most of it was surprisingly intact. Well, maybe they just should have turned it into a train station.
SPEAKER_05: Oh, that would have been great, yeah. So I see that you have two competing forces that are, you know, fully in both camps. Like I want these archaeological digs preserved. I also want, you know, functional infrastructure and metro lines. It just sounds like a headache for everyone involved. Yeah, it really can be.
SPEAKER_02: But there's a silver lining because a lot of these sites wouldn't be excavated at all if it weren't for the city's push to expand public transit. So in a way, historians do benefit from uncovering all kinds of stuff that might otherwise have just been buried indefinitely. And in some stations, ancient relics that they find during the construction of the stations are visible in these display cases, which makes them accessible to tourists and also just kind of a neat thing for everyday commuters. Oh, that's nice. I like that.
SPEAKER_05: That you could go to a train station somewhere and see a little museum of what was found in that site. That's cool.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah. Attention passengers, food service has now begun in the dining car.
SPEAKER_05: As a building type, diners are striking the long and thin with chrome accents and rounded corners. Inside their narrow spaces, there's just enough room to walk through and sit down. In a built world of taller and deeper structures made with stone and brick and steel and glass, diners are kind of strange. But if you understand where they come from, all their curious design features suddenly make a lot more sense. Diners are an evolution of dining cars, you know, the ones found on trains. It's not just their name and aesthetic that traces back to railways. Many diners were prefabricated as modular units and specifically designed to be taken by truck or train to their final destination, hence the long and narrow layout. Entrepreneur Jerry O'Mahoney is widely credited with coming up with the diner as it is and building the first one in 1913. His creations evolved to have that now distinctive diner look, long and narrow, sleek and curvy with flashy chrome accents. Only vintage prefab diners came complete with counters, stools, tile floors, even restrooms, and they were just transported to the destination and they got hooked up to onsite utilities. In some cases, actual dining cars were also converted into freestanding diners. And in other cases, diners are simply made to look like classic prefabs for that nostalgic appeal. Which, by the way, totally works on me.
SPEAKER_02: One of the largest fish markets in Bangkok, Thailand, is effectively bisected by a train track. And so vendors flank the rail line and the name of the place translates to Umbrella Pulldown Market. Well, you're going to have to explain that name to me because that doesn't make any sense
SPEAKER_05: at all.
SPEAKER_02: Right. It's a very strange name, but it refers to this very specific feature or arguably bug that fundamentally shapes how this market works. Because those vendors I mentioned, they're not just on either side of the tracks like set backaways. They set up their goods right against the rails. And so shoppers have to actually walk between the rails where the trains go. The market itself is over 100 years old. And when it was first put there in like 1905, there was no railroad track. That came later. But even once it was cut in half by a railroad track, people just kept coming to get their fish, to get their produce. And here's a clip of how it actually unfolds in practice. When a train approaches, alarms sound so that people know to get out of the way and vendors quickly pull back their wares and they lift up their awnings to make sure that they don't get hit by the train. Hence the Umbrella Pulldown Market.
SPEAKER_05: Wow, you weren't kidding. Those trains are almost brushed right against the awnings. I mean, even after they've been retracted. I mean, this system, it seems like kind of awesome. Like this is a creative way to maximize space in a crowded urban setting. But it also seems incredibly dangerous.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. And to some extent it is really dangerous. But apparently accents are relatively few and far between. And most of the time they just involve a train hitting someone's wares that got left too close to the tracks or a table that didn't get pulled back far enough or fast enough. Some vendors, though, have these particularly clever solutions like wheeled carts that are set into little tracks that they've created in the pavement so they can just slide them back and forth away from the rails as needed. And if you watch that moment of transition when the train is coming, it is, for the most part, a pretty well choreographed dance.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, so I don't know if I would cut it that close personally, but it is clear from these videos that the vendors know what to do and when to do it. You know, plus it looks like the train is going pretty slow and it honks a lot. Still, it's just wild that they wait until the very last seconds to get their fish and then just kind of step out of the way. You must really want that fish.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes. Supposedly the fish is really excellent. So maybe that makes a risk.
SPEAKER_05: I don't doubt it.
SPEAKER_07: Attention passengers, this train will be bypassing the upcoming stop as service to this location
SPEAKER_01: has been permanently discontinued.
SPEAKER_05: I have another short and sweet story for all you train fans. It's about a remote line in Hokkaido, the northernmost island in Japan. There was one rural train stop that was almost entirely unused. By the early 2010s, it was down to just one single regular passenger. She was a teenager, a sophomore in high school, who rode it twice a day to and from class. The regional rail authorities were planning to shut the line down until her parents intervened. Surely, they asked, the stop could stay open just until their daughter graduated. They got their wish. The stop did close permanently, but only after she took one final ride to her high school graduation ceremony.
SPEAKER_01: Next stop, the Schleswig-Holstein region of Germany. Please note that for island access, passengers will need to switch trains in order to reach their destination.
SPEAKER_02: I lived in Germany as a teenager, and I've been back a number of times since then. So between that and the country's epic railway network, it's probably no surprise that I have a ton of train stories about Deutschland. In fact, one of my favorite train lines in the entire country is this little stretch of track that connects the mainland with a tiny island called Nordstrandismur, which is located off the coast in the North Sea.
SPEAKER_05: And how tiny of an island are we talking about here?
SPEAKER_02: It's less than a square mile, but because its low-lying areas flood regularly, it can only really support about a few dozen residents. And locals refer to this situation as Landunter or land under.
SPEAKER_05: I got that one, but I appreciate you translating. Right, right. I threw you a softball there.
SPEAKER_02: Anyway, to cope with this situation, folks live in homes on these four artificial mounds, and these mounds are built up so that they stay above the waterline. And one narrow gauge rail is the only transit to and from the island.
SPEAKER_05: And so I gather that a narrow gauge rail is a little bit smaller than regular train tracks, but can you elaborate on that?
SPEAKER_02: Right. So basically a standard train line has rails that are set around five feet apart. Narrow gauge lines generally range from just two to three feet apart. So naturally they're cheaper and easier to make.
SPEAKER_05: Wait, this is kind of a little bit of an aside, but like if they're cheaper and easier to make, why don't you just make all rails narrower than? I mean, it seems logical, right?
SPEAKER_02: But the problem is that narrow gauge lines are less stable and not really suited to modern fast trains especially. So there used to actually be a lot of these in Germany, but most of them were shut down or upgraded decades ago.
SPEAKER_05: But not this one because it serves such a small population, I gather. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02: So a fun fact to give you a sense of the scale of this place. They reportedly have the smallest school in Germany with just three students, so really there aren't that many people coming and going, and there's not a lot of demand for standard sized train engines and train cars.
SPEAKER_05: Oh, so not only are the tracks smaller, like the trains themselves are like miniature.
SPEAKER_02: Oh yes, and they often look a lot different. Here's the most normal looking one that I've actually seen them use.
SPEAKER_05: Oh, that thing's adorable. There's this little train engine, it's pulling a little open top, they kind of look like cargo cars. Are they hauling dirt or something? I don't know, but it's all so small and cute. And it's like red and green. It kind of looks like the train going around Santa's workshop. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02: And that's just the more standard looking one. Over the decades, they've used a bunch of different designs, like ones that were wind powered like with sails and open air ones where you just sit on a little bench and chug along. And then there's this one that is probably my favorite.
SPEAKER_05: Oh wow. Okay, so this is just like a bike with a bike seat and pedals and everything on rails instead of wheels. Does that mean that everyone has a kind of like rail vehicle like this that they can get to and fro when it comes to going to the mainland in order to get supplies and stuff? Every household on the island has their own little train for exactly that reason.
SPEAKER_02: But there are a few other options for getting back and forth. When the tide is high, boats can dock. And when it's low, people can actually just walk right across the mud flats if they're careful about it. But at any time, because of the way that rail is raised up on this artificial ridge, they can just get back and forth by train.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, I'm still just kind of surprised that people can make do in places like this that flood all the time.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it is tricky, but they make it work. Like islands in the North Sea mostly subsist on a combination of agriculture and tourism. And the residents of Nordstrandisch were, for example, raised sheep, among other things. And here's a clip from a guy who walked across when the water was low and interviewed a resident. And part of what I love about their exchange is that both of them have these very distinctive regional dialects. And the interviewer launches right in with this very northern German greeting, moin moin.
SPEAKER_00: Moin moin, hello. You are here to help Nordstrandisch to get a
SPEAKER_02: seat in really keen on sorting something out so that they can stay on their like ancestral land, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it does sound tough. I mean, it also sounds kind of amazing what they've been
SPEAKER_05: able to do living out on this island, you know, like, and they get to own a train, you know? Who doesn't want to own their own train? Now, before we leave the North Sea, I do want to
SPEAKER_02: switch tracks for just one more minute because there's this one particularly famous island a bit farther north and it's also connected to the mainland by train, but that's not actually what I'm going to talk about. I first learned about this place in the early 90s when I was a student in Germany from my first German cassette tape, which was written by the punk band Die Erztet.
SPEAKER_02: And this particular song, Westerland, is about a fancy resort town on this bigger and posher and frankly much more well-known North Sea island. So basically it's a parody of these bougie resort cars. He's singing about how he's stuck in Berlin and so he's sitting on a hand towel by a lake just wishing and imagining he could be back on Westerland instead, sitting along a nice sandy beach on the North Sea.
SPEAKER_01: After the break, our final stop today will be the island nation of Japan.
SPEAKER_05: Please pay attention to the rail workers pointing and calling as you exit the train. When you're working on the go, how can you make sure the confidential information on your laptop screen is safe from wandering eyes? 3M has the answer with the new 3M BrightScreen Privacy Filter. Using Nanoluver technology, 3M BrightScreen Privacy Filters deter visual hackers while providing a 25% brighter experience over other privacy filters. In fact, it's 3M BrightScreen Privacy Filter yet. The perfect balance of screen clarity and visual privacy. It's a new type of privacy filter built for an era where our screens are wherever we go. Try the new 3M BrightScreen Privacy Filter and stop worrying about confidential or personal information escaping your computer screen. Everything that appears in your screen is for your eyes only. Visit 3MScreens.com slash brighter to get your new 3M BrightScreen Privacy Filter today and work like no one is watching. 3MScreens.com slash brighter. The International Rescue Committee works in more than 40 countries to serve people whose lives have been upended by conflict and disaster. Over 110 million people are displaced around the world and the IRC urgently needs your help to meet this unprecedented need. The IRC aims to respond within 72 hours after an emergency strikes and they stay as long as they are needed. Some of the IRC's most important work is addressing the inequalities facing women and girls, ensuring safety from harm, improving health outcomes, increasing access to education, improving economic well-being, and ensuring women and girls have the power to influence decisions that affect their lives. Generous people around the world give to the IRC to help families affected by humanitarian crises with emergency supplies. Your generous donation will give the IRC steady, reliable support, allowing them to continue their ongoing humanitarian efforts even as they respond to emergencies. Donate today by visiting rescue.org slash rebuild. Donate now and help refugee families in need. If you want to give your body the nutrients it craves and the energy it needs, there's Kachava. It's a plant-based super blend made up of super foods, greens, proteins, omegas, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and probiotics. In other words, it's all your daily nutrients in a glass. Some folks choose to take it as the foundation of a healthy breakfast or lunch, while others lean on it as a delicious protein-packed snack to curb cravings and reduce grazing. If you're in a hurry, you can just add two scoops of Kachava super blend to ice water or your favorite milk or milk alternative and just get going. But I personally like to blend it with greens and fruit and ice. You know, treat yourself nice. Take a minute and treat yourself right. You'll get all the stuff that you need and feel great. Kachava is offering 10% off for a limited time. Just go to kachava.com slash invisible spelled K-A-C-H-A-V-A and get 10% off your first order. That's K-A-C-H-A-V-A dot com slash invisible. Kachava dot com slash invisible. Chances are you're listening to 99% invisible on your phone, probably while you're on the go. Think of all that you do on your phone the moment you leave your front door, whether it's looking up directions, scrolling social media, or listening to your favorite podcast. It requires an amazing network. That's why you should switch to T-Mobile. T-Mobile covers more highway miles with 5G than anyone else and helps keep you connected with 5G from the driveway to the highway and the miles in between. Because your phone should just work where you are. It's your lifeline to pretty much everything you didn't bring with you. So next time you head out, whether you're taking a trip or going to work or just running errands, remember T-Mobile has got you covered. Find out more at T-Mobile dot com slash network and switch to the network that covers more highway miles with 5G than anyone else. Coverage is not available in some areas. See 5G details at T-Mobile dot com. I'm back with Kurt Kohlstedt talking about trains. Oh yes. And it would be of course criminal to do an episode about trains and not mention Japan,
SPEAKER_02: with its really rich history of being super innovative when it comes to railways. For example, they have seismometers that signal trains to stop when an earthquake is starting. And as a result, they have basically no train accidents related to earthquakes anymore.
SPEAKER_05: I mean, in a country famous for earthquakes, that seems like a vital development.
SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah, definitely. And Japan also just launched a bus slash train hybrid that has wheels for both roads and rails and converts in just 15 seconds. Wow. Oh, I love it. Like all the best of public transit rolled into one.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's great. Sweet. But the main innovation I want to talk about briefly is this system called point and call, which is not really about how trains themselves are designed, but about how railway employees keep them running. And here's a clip showing how this works in practice.
SPEAKER_05: Okay, so there are these loud announcements, which of course I cannot understand, but what really jumped out at me is how much the rail employees are kind of gesticulating. You know, like it's very dramatic. I take it this is the point of the point and call system. Like, but what's the actual point of what they're pointing at?
SPEAKER_02: Right. So in short, the point and call method is meant to improve safety on rail lines. Japan did extensive behavioral research to come up with this system. Through testing, they concluded that if their workers associate a habit with more than one sense, for example, if they're physically pointing at a thing while talking about the action that they're performing related to that thing, it can reduce workplace errors dramatically.
SPEAKER_05: Okay. So the workers stationed alongside the train point and call out that it's all clear, like no one's caught in a door. And then the conductor points forward before starting that that's a sort of like whole theatrical system of making this operation safer.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly. And it's not just directions. They also point at buttons and gauges and signs and other stuff. And each of these actions is designed to help everybody who's working on the rail system be more alert and stay on task. I mean, if this works so well,
SPEAKER_05: is it found anywhere else besides Japan if other countries adopted the system? You know, it really hasn't taken off in other countries as much as I would have thought,
SPEAKER_02: given how successful it has been in Japan. And it's not totally clear why. But there are places that do use parts of the point and call approach. Like, did they just point or they just call?
SPEAKER_05: What do they do?
SPEAKER_02: Well, for example, in New York City, Metro Transit Authority conductors have to point at a sign before leaving a station, but they don't have to like shout an announcement along with that. I mean, is it because they feel self-conscious or something about the shouting part?
SPEAKER_05: It strikes me as odd. Yeah, I think maybe that's it.
SPEAKER_02: And like, maybe that's why they just stick to pointing. But in any case, there's this pretty goofy video online of a bunch of people who decided to make some NTA agents smile by putting up signs in front of the sign that they're supposed to point at with phrases like, point here if you're dead sexy. And of course, operators have no choice. They have to point.
SPEAKER_07: Well, that's some pretty wholesome infrastructure fun.
SPEAKER_05: Right, right. Especially for New Yorkers.
SPEAKER_02: I feel like that's really that's really nice. I like it.
SPEAKER_05: Oh, cool. Well, I'll look for the pointing next time I'm on a train. That's pretty cool. Yeah. 99% Invisible was produced this week by Kurt Kohlstedt and Martine Gonzalez. Chris Berube was our affable conductor. Music by our director of sound, Swan Rial, with additional music by Scott Joplin and Dee Aertsa. Jelani Hall is the executive producer for the rest of the team. Includes Vivien Leigh, Emmett Fitzgerald, Jason De Leon, Christopher Johnson, Loshma Dawn, Joe Rosenberg, Sophia Klatsker, and me, Roman Mars. We are part of the Stitcher and Sirius XM podcast family. Now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building in beautiful Uptown, Oakland, California. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars and the show at 99 PI org. We're on Instagram and Reddit too. You can find links to other Stitcher shows I love as well as every past episode of 99 PI at 99 PI. dot org.
SPEAKER_01: Greetings passengers traveling between Sirius XM and Stitcher. Those are our stops for today, but look forward to seeing you on another 99% invisible train soon.
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SPEAKER_03: or die, baby. Any day motors, even motors. Punto com. So low par article. The he believes he applied. The six units.
SPEAKER_03: Ma, but then we'll get a have you as a Casa. Claro. But then we'll see about the men. The same. Another guy. He for Keno. Yeah. No single go. Say, how about Ignacio? Miss Delgado. Oh, you know, in the mass, my core pair of those voting is so so. So I'll know if it's a foot for us. Pawnee. Yeah, no, no. We got it. Take.
