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

It's sometimes hard to know what stories we should tell when we're in the middle of a crisis.

Some people need a story that helps them escape. Others need a story that

directly confronts our anxiety. What I love about the episode we have for you today

is that it's really both and it also happens to be one of the most

beautiful stories this show has ever produced. A few years ago we toured the

west coast with the rest of Radiotopia performing performing live stories on stage to sold-out crowds.

For our part of the show, 99% Invisible collaborated with John Mowelum and the Brink Players, which featured

members of the Decemerists and Black Prairie.

It was the story of Jeannie Chance, a woman whose voice held a shaken city together in a time of crisis. Even though the story of an earthquake in Alaska in 1964

has nothing directly to do with what many of us are going through now, it feels so

urgent and important that we all listen to this together.

After it was performed live a handful of times, John Muallum continued researching and writing

about Jenny Chants, and it eventually became a book that is out today as I report this and it is

brilliant and beautiful. So this week we're going to play the original live story song

that we performed on stage plus a brand new interview that I did with

John last week. I hope you love it as much as I do.

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 we on the city.

...