Hey there beautiful nerds. Last week a bunch of us from Radiotopia were on our west coast tour and it was a blast.

The illusionist Helen Zoltzman and I hosted the show which features stories from Criminal

The Memory Palace mortified the, The Illusionist, The West Wing Weekly, and 99% invisible.

For the 99-PI Live story, we went back to my favorite writer and musical collaborators,

John Muelham, and in this incarnation, brink players but you know them as members of the

Decemberists and Black Prairie. Performing this story in front of a live audience

was a privilege unlike anything else I've ever done and I couldn't

wait to share it with you. I hope you like it.

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. It was the middle of the night on March 27th 1964.

Earlier that evening, the second biggest earthquake ever measured at the time, an insane 9.2

had mangled Anchorage, Alaska.

115 people died.

Houses turned literally upside down or skidded into the sea.

There was no light or power in the city,

and for a long time virtually no communication with the

outside world but there was radio. Are we on the air? Yes? We're ready to go again.

It was a station in Anchorage running on backup generators and a cracked transmitter.

A station in Fairbanks picked up that signal and repeated it.

And a man in Juno somehow picked up that Fairbanks station, called a radio station in Seattle,

and let the broadcast play over the phone.

The Boy Scout troop that went overnight to McHugh Creek,

Bill Noble would like to get a message if they are all right.

...