This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

We're based in beautiful downtown Oakland, California, which is a port city on the San Francisco Bay.

Massive containers ships travel across the Pacific and end up here.

From miles away you can see the enormous white cranes that pull giant uniformly sized metal boxes off the ships.

People say the cranes are the inspiration for the Atat walkers

in the Empire Strikes Back, but that's not true.

It's just a good story to tell when you pass by on the bridge. The Port of Oakland and its container

ships have always captured my imagination and it turns out they also captured the

imagination of my colleague and friend Alexis Madrigal.

I went out, I visited a ship that was docked in Oakland,

and when I went out on the ship,

I walked into this room that was all wood-paneled

and this kind of old Romanian captain

walks in with his marble reds and he sits him down on the table and he looks right in my

eyes and he goes, what is your intent?

And I was just in love, like from this love at first sight.

I was just like no one ever hears these voices.

They're so amazing. So there's kind of two head people on a ship one is the captain the other is the chief engineer down in the engine room and so you know we looked at bridge and we went back to that wood paneled room and the chief engineer comes in another Romanian dude and he goes,

you visited the head of the ship and he taps his chest, now visit the heart.

And he takes us down into the engine room, you know,

with these these trenches that are like, you know,

five feet tall.

...