362- Goodness Gracious Great Balls of Twine

99% Invisible

SiriusXM Podcasts and Roman Mars

Design, Arts

4.8 • 27.5K Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2019

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Vivian Le is on a mission that requires equal parts science, philosophy, and daring, in search of something that’s been hotly contested for decades: the world's largest ball of twine.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars.
0:05.0	We are a waste deep in summer right now, which is a great time of year if you're in the podcast business.
0:12.0	Because it's road trip season.
0:15.0	Time to hop in the car.
0:18.0	Cue up your favorite podcasts.
0:21.0	This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars.
0:24.0	And hit the road.
0:25.0	That's producer Vivian Lee. And we recently sent her on a 1200 mile road trip through the Midwest.
0:32.0	And I saw a lot of things along the way. Bob Dylan's childhood home, a guitar made out of a bedpan, the inside of about 400 boxes of chicken McNuggets, lots of horses.
0:43.0	Oh, horses!
0:45.0	But we didn't send Vivian out to look for horses or to check a few states off her bucket list.
0:50.0	She was on a mission that required equal parts science, philosophy, and daring.
0:56.0	In search of something that's been hotly contested for decades.
1:00.0	The world's largest ball of twine.
1:03.0	I began my quest by following in the footsteps of the great Weird Alliankovik.
1:11.0	To a twine ball I heard about in Minnesota.
1:14.0	About a 20 minutes old.
1:19.0	About an hour west of St. Paul is a tiny little city called Darwin.
1:24.0	It isn't the kind of place you'd expect to find a great wonder of the world.
1:29.0	The population is only about 350.
1:32.0	I accidentally circled the entire downtown in about two minutes while looking for parking.
1:37.0	The main street is only three blocks long. There's a bank, a water tower, and a 9 ton ball of twine
	...

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