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

Happy New Year, beautiful nerds. As is our tradition, we are launching 2023 with another batch of many stories from the 99

P.I crew. We took an episode in between to send a big box of Christmas gifts to our

Lola, but we wouldn't leave you with only one many stories episode, of course not.

We have stories of liminal space discombobulation, the wildest theme park in the world,

and the new family road trip game that will soon be sweeping the nation called, should this be a street or a road.

Stay tuned. Hey, Delaney Hall, what's your mini story about?

Hey Roman, my mini story is about a word that I learned recently, and the word is Strode, which is a

portmanteau of street and road. And are you familiar with the term?

I am. I am familiar with the word Stut, although I don't think I know everything.

So yes, let's talk about it.

Okay, so for people who aren't, it describes a thoroughfare that basically tries to do two incompatible things at once and in

the process it does both things badly. We call this the futon of transportation. So this is Charles

Morone he's also known as Chuck and he invented the term strode. If you think of a futon as being an uncomfortable couch that makes into an uncomfortable bed,

a strode tries to do two things at once and it fails at both.

It tries to be both street and road.

I think most people think of those two things as synonyms,

but so what is the difference between a street and a road?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's right.

Most of us don't think of there being any difference, but Chuck is a

former traffic engineer and he gave me his take on how he thinks about those two

different things. So we'll start with how Chuck defines a road.

...