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

Back in 2018, Kurt Colson and I went on a tour, performing a 99 p.I.

story live in cities along the East Coast, and Swan Reall and her band provided musical

accompaniment.

It was so much fun.

On stage, we told the audience about a key development that helped shape a generation of modern

artists and designers. The stage version was relatively short but we later

expanded the piece into a full episode. We have that story for you today with an additional brand new related story about how Frank Lloyd Wright's son John

went on to create one of the most iconic building toy sets in American history. That's a story that Kurt has been dying to tell for a really long time. So stay tuned for that. But first, here's Frobels gifts.

Once upon a time there was a boy named Friedrich Frobel.

His early life reads like one of those dark old German fairy tales.

His mother died in 1783 right after he was born and so

Friedrich Frobel had a lonely childhood. He spent his days in the woods looking at

trees and rocks and flowers, wandering the dense forests of Thuringia and what was then Prussia.

It's a lush region, sometimes referred to today as Dask Grunhearts De Deutschlands, the green heart of Germany.

That's Kurt Kohlstadt. He produced this story.

I actually lived near Thuringia when I was a kid,

and the forests there are Einfaajrzauberhaft.

Simply magical.

And I can really see how Frogo became enthralled.

He looked at rocks, he studied the trees.

We worked with a forester for a while,

...