When people ask me what my favorite episode of 99% invisible is, I have a hard time answering.

Not because they're all my precious little babies or some such nonsense, but mostly because I just can't remember them all, and there's no simple criteria to judge

them against each other.

But the show I want to play for you today is definitely in contention for the best episode we've ever made.

It just has everything engaging storytellers, brilliant reporting,

and a compelling history of a moment when the world really changed.

It's called the Freedom House Ambulance Service.

It originally aired in the summer of 2020

when a lot of the fundamental aspects of work, life, health, law

enforcement, structural racism, cities, they were all being questioned by more

and more people because of COVID and the George Floyd protests.

Kevin Hazard, who reported this piece, subsequently released a whole book on Freedom House

called American Sirens The Incredible Story of the black men who became America's first

paramedics. It is new, it is out now, you should buy it, you should read it, it should be

on all your Christmas lists, it's incredible. To celebrate the book's release, I'm proud to represent to you

the remarkable story of the Freedom House Ambulance Service. This is 99%

99% invisible.

I'm Roman Mars.

Back in the 1960s and 70s in the city of Pittsburgh, there was a nickname for guys like John Moon, the unemployables.

Which simply meant that no matter where you went for a job, nobody would hire you.

Moon grew up in Pittsburgh's largely black and economically depressed Hill District.

In Better Times, the Hill had its own Negro League Baseball team and jazz clubs that hosted Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong.

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