Invisibilia
by NPR
Latest episode
New NPR Series: "We Keep Us Safe" from the Embedded podcast
New NPR Series: "We Keep Us Safe" from the Embedded podcast
About this podcast
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
The newest 50 of 89 episodes
- New NPR Series: "We Keep Us Safe" from the Embedded podcast · 3 minIn the summer of 2020, sixteen-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. traveled a thousand miles to join the racial justice movement of his generation in the wake of George Floyd's killing…
- "The Network" from NPR's Embedded · 42 minNew from NPR's Embedded: Hosts Victoria Estrada and Marta Martinez travel across Latin America and within the U.S. to understand how women in Brazil discovered one of the…
- Alternate Realities from NPR's Embedded · 26 minNew from NPR's Embedded: Reporter Zach Mack thinks his dad has gone all in on conspiracy theories, while his father thinks that Zach is the one being brainwashed. In 2024, after…
- Tested (Ep 2): Questions of a Physical Nature · 34 minWe go back almost 100 years, to the beginning of women's inclusion in elite sports. It turns out that men had an odd variety of concerns about women athletes. Some doubted these…
- Tested (Ep 1): The Choice · 39 minNew from NPR's Embedded podcast and CBC in Canada: Would you alter your body for the chance to compete for a gold medal? That's the question facing a small group of elite…
- The Goodbye Show · 50 min · Season 10 Episode 1In their final episode, Invisibilia searches for the right way to say goodbye. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship…
- Revisiting Love and Lapses: A Conversation with Code Switch host B.A. Parker · 33 minSometimes 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…
- Power Tools · 35 min · Season 9 Episode 5Bad 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…
- Freedom Diving · 33 min · Season 9 Episode 4After 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…
- Therapy Ghostbusters · 48 min · Season 9 Episode 3In 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…
- A Little Bit Pregnant · 28 min · Season 9 Episode 2This week on Invisibilia, could the rebrand of a familiar pill open up a new way to control fertility in a post-Roe America? See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our…
- The P-Word · 42 min · Season 9 Episode 1Alex 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…
- Invisibilia Takes Control · 2 min · Season 92022 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…
- Therapy, with Friends · 39 min · Season 8 Episode 6Would 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…
- Poop Friends · 45 min · Season 8 Episode 5Sh*t happens. So why is it so hard to talk about? This week, the ways that poop divides and binds us in our friendships. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection…
- Friends with Benefits · 50 min · Season 8 Episode 4A 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…
- International Friend of Mystery · 36 min · Season 8 Episode 3You 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…
- Nun of Us Are Friends · 45 min · Season 8 Episode 2It'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…
- A Friendly Ghost Story · 49 min · Season 8 Episode 1It'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…
- The Friendship Season · 2 min · Season 8Friendship gets the Invisibilia treatment. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast…
- American Slow Radio · 41 min · Season 7 Episode 6Let'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. See…
- The Great Narrative Escape · 56 min · Season 7 Episode 5Imagine 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…
- The Chaos Machine: A Looping Revolt · 47 min · Season 7 Episode 4Is 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…
- The Chaos Machine: Wrathful Lord · 49 min · Season 7 Episode 3The 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 Chaos Machine: An Endless Hole · 38 min · Season 7 Episode 2Yowei 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…
- Eat The Rich · 51 min · Season 7 Episode 1Invisibilia explores a social experiment with money, focused around a contentious topic: reparations. What happens when you demand white people give up their wealth? See…
- Season 7: New Stories. New Hosts. · 4 min · Season 7Invisibilia is back! Stories that help you see the world differently, with new hosts Kia Miakka Natisse and Yowei Shaw. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection…
- Trust Fall · 48 min · Season 6 Episode 7Hacking, phishing, surveillance, disinformation... these are tools used to silence dissidents and influence elections. But what happens when these same methods are used against…
- Two Heartbeats A Minute · 1 h 6 min · Season 6 Episode 1The strange story of an unlikely crew of people who band together to take on one of our largest problems using nothing but whale sounds, machine learning, and a willingness to…
- White v. White? · 1 h 0 min · Season 6 Episode 4A city council candidate says he's black. But his opponent accuses him of being a white man pretending to be black. If race is simply a social construct and not a biological…
- An Unlikely Superpower · 51 min · Season 6 Episode 3What if you had a superpower that allowed you to see part of the world that was to come? At the age of 60, a Scottish woman named Joy Milne discovers she has a biological gift…
- The Confrontation · 52 min · Season 6 Episode 2Welcome to what is possibly the most tense and uncomfortable summer program in America! The Boston-based program aims to teach the next generation the real truth about race, and…
- The Reluctant Immortalist · 44 min · Season 6 Episode 5Daniel Martinez discovered the unthinkable: a creature that breaks one of the most fundamental laws of life. In the wake of his discovery--which has been widely confirmed by the…
- The Last Sound · 44 min · Season 6 Episode 6Bernie Krause was a successful musician as a young man, playing with rock stars like Jim Morrison and George Harrison in the 1960s and '70s. But then one day, Bernie heard a…
- Season 6 Trailer · 2 min · Season 6You hear the train barreling towards you and you're tied to the tracks. It's an impossible situation. Most people would panic, and then a tiny handful would think up improbable…
- Raising Devendra · 29 min · Season 5 Episode 11What happens when you treat artificial intelligence with unconditional love? See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship…
- Love and Lapses · 16 min · Season 5 Episode 10Producer B.A. Parker started recording her calls with her father because she was concerned about the care at his nursing home. But the recordings gave her a window into something…
- Back When I Was Older · 19 minAs a parent, what do you do when your four-year-old starts telling you about memories that can't possibly be his? Memories that he says are from a past life? See pcm.adswizz.com…
- The Profile · 22 min · Season 5 Episode 8A mysterious profile pops up on a dating app - leading to a bubble of chaos and confusion. A story about trying to sort fact versus fiction, how destabilizing that can be, and a…
- Kraftland · 26 min · Season 5 Episode 7Richard Kraft was in a fog of grief when he bought his first Disney collectible at an auction. But once he started, he couldn't stop. In the first episode of our new fall season…
- The End of Empathy · 50 min · Season 5 Episode 6Invisibilia is a show that runs on empathy. We believe in it. But are we right? In this episode, we'll let you decide. We tell the same story twice in order to examine the…
- A Very Offensive Rom-Com · 59 min · Season 5 Episode 5A young woman discovers a pattern in her dating habits that disturbs her - a pattern that challenges her very conception of who she is and what she believes in. The realization…
- The Remote Control Brain · 45 min · Season 5 Episode 4What would it be like if you could control your mood with a hand held device? Literally turn the device to different settings and make yourself happier and sadder? Alix Spiegel…
- The Weatherman · 41 min · Season 5 Episode 3In this episode of Invisibilia, we explore our relationship with uncertainty through the eyes of a chief meteorologist. We wonder: what do you do when you don't know what to do?…
- Post, Shoot · 50 min · Season 5 Episode 2What is the relationship between the version of you that lives online and the one that walks around the earth? We think of our online selves as shadow versions of us which we can…
- The Fifth Vital Sign · 59 min · Season 5 Episode 1We look at how our culture's massive effort to address pain has paradoxically increased it. And we follow one young girl as she struggles through a bizarre and extreme treatment…
- Season 5 Trailer · 1 min · Season 5This moment in our culture can feel fraught. From 'fake news' to the opioid crisis, there's a lot of uncertainty about the future. So this season, Invisibilia helps you discern…
- BONUS: Youth Radio Girl Mystery · 31 min · Season 4Years ago, producer Yowei Shaw taught high school students how to make radio. And in one of her classes, something bizarre happened with one of her students, something that she's…
- BONUS: The Prayer · 14 min · Season 4Five years ago, Leena Sanzgiri was living her childhood dream... New York city apartment, job at Vogue, and a boyfriend she planned to marry. Until the July day she woke up in…
- BONUS: Who Do You Let In? · 24 min · Season 4An uncomfortable encounter with a stranger sets producer Abby Wendle on a quest to answer the question: who do you let in and who do you keep out? In her search for balance…
