Invisibilia
Unseeable forces control human behavior and shape our ideas, beliefs, and assumptions. Invisibilia—Latin for invisible things—fuses narrative storytelling with science that will make you see your own life differently.
Episodes
April 28, 2023 • 50 mins
In their final episode, Invisibilia searches for the right way to say goodbye.
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December 16, 2022 • 32 mins
Sometimes the holidays are filled with the people you love. Other times, they're marked by an absence. In this special holiday episode, new Code Switch co-host and former Invisibilia producer B.A. Parker tells a story about family, loss and preserving memories before it's too late. Then Parker joins Kia and Yowei to reflect on the making of this story, and what it means to her now.
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October 8, 2022 • 34 mins
Bad bosses. Obnoxious coworkers. Unfair compensation. There are so many reasons people feel disempowered in the workplace. But how can our feelings about power enable or disrupt the larger dynamics we hate at work? This week, Yowei Shaw seeks answers from a power researcher and a union organizer.
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September 30, 2022 • 32 mins
After months of working from home and retreating from the world, Kia Miakka Natisse is stuck - in her house, and in her head. In an attempt to break out of the funk, she's searching for wisdom at the bottom of the ocean with South Africa's first Black freediving instructor, Zandile Ndhlovu.
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September 23, 2022 • 47 mins
In San Jose, California, a community clinic was stumped as to why their clients were seeing ghosts. This week, a story about grappling with ghosts of our past and one clinic's attempt to heal intergenerational trauma.
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September 16, 2022 • 27 mins
This week on Invisibilia, could the rebrand of a familiar pill open up a new way to control fertility in a post-Roe America?
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September 9, 2022 • 41 mins
Alex is a comic who feels perfectly comfortable commanding a packed, rowdy audience, but consistently submits to what other people want in everyday life. This week, a look at how uncomfortable feelings about power can backfire on ourselves and the people we love. We get the help of a power expert - a dominatrix - to untangle Alex's power dynamics, and find out what it takes to treat a power allergy.
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September 6, 2022 • 1 min
2022 feels like walking a tightrope. We're grappling with control of our bodies, our time, the direction of our country - while trying to not spin out and just doomscroll. So this season, Invisibilia takes on control. The narratives we have about what's in or out of our control. Invisible tools of control. The crutches we use to FEEL in control but that might not be helping.
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November 5, 2021 • 39 mins
Would you ever consider going to therapy with a friend?Two best friends who call themselves brothers were drifting apart, so they asked psychotherapist Esther Perel to help — and we listened in. This episode was recorded in collaboration with Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel and a companion episode can be heard on her podcast.
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October 28, 2021 • 44 mins
Sh*t happens. So why is it so hard to talk about? This week, the ways that poop divides and binds us in our friendships.
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October 21, 2021 • 50 mins
A lot of us think that it's a bad idea to get physical with friends. We worry it'll get messy, maybe even ruin the friendship. But if physical intimacy between friends weren't so taboo, what could our friendships look like? In this episode, we explore the gray zone of sex and friendship, following a man who deliberately kept his friendships with women hazy and now wants to apologize, and a pair of BFFs who became close through sex.
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September 30, 2021 • 35 mins
You know the old saying--keep your friends close and your enemies closer. But what if you can't tell the difference? In this episode, the story of two friends who got caught up in a Top Secret operation that tested their assumptions about trust, betrayal, loyalty, and power.
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September 24, 2021 • 44 mins
It's a basic tenet of friendship that you get to choose your friends. We look at two institutions that took away that choice: convents circa the 1960s and a summer program with unusual rules. What do we lose and what do we gain when we give up our preferences and try to make friends with everyone equally?
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September 17, 2021 • 48 mins
It's one of the most common and infuriating friend mysteries out there - a friend disappears into thin air. But where do these ghosts go? And why are we so haunted by them? If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.
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September 14, 2021 • 1 min
Friendship gets the Invisibilia treatment.
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June 12, 2021 • 41 mins
Let's get slow. Producer Abby Wendle picks up the gauntlet that was thrown down in the last episode "The Great Narrative Escape." Sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.
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May 20, 2021 • 55 mins
Imagine a TV show with no plot, no characters, no tension... and yet, it went viral! In this episode, we have a story that questions storytelling as we know it. Plus, co-hosts Kia Miakka Natisse and Yowei Shaw take a spectacularly unspectacular train ride.
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May 14, 2021 • 46 mins
Is 209 Times helping or hurting the community it claims to serve? What does the site mean for the future of local news in America? And what can be done about it? In the final installment of "The Chaos Machine" series , Yowei finds herself in the middle of a long-standing tug of war over who owns the truth.
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May 6, 2021 • 49 mins
The man behind 209 Times is not who you'd expect. In Part 2, co-host Yowei Shaw discovers the website's surprising origin story, and ends up at the frontlines of a revolt against the mainstream media and a fight over who gets to own the truth.
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April 30, 2021 • 38 mins
Yowei gets a tip about Russian trolls in Stockton, California and falls down a hole of swirling conspiracy theories. At the center is a scrappy, controversial website that has become one of the most popular sources of local news in town. Some say it's doing important investigative journalism while others say it's spreading hateful lies about progressive leaders. In part 1 of The Chaos Machine series, what happens when traditional l...
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