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

We are waste deep in summer right now, which is a great time of year if you're in the podcast business, because it's road trip season.

Time to hop in the car.

Q up your favorite podcasts.

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars, and hit the road.

That's producer Vivian Lee, and we recently sent her on a 1,200 mile road trip through the Midwest.

And I saw a lot of things along the way. Bob Dylan's

childhood home, a guitar made out of a bedpan, the inside of about 400 boxes of

chicken McNuggets, lots of horses. Horses.

But we didn't send Vivian out to look for horses,

or to check a few states off her bucket list.

She was on a mission that required equal parts science, philosophy, and daring in search of something that's been hotly contested for decades, the world's largest ball of twine. I began my quest by following in the footsteps of the

great Weird Owl Yankovic. To a twine ball I heard about in Minnesota.

About an hour west of St. Paul is a tiny little city called Darwin. It isn't the kind of place you'd

expect to find a great wonder of the world. The population is only about 350.

I accidentally circled the entire downtown in about two minutes

while looking for parking. The main street is only three blocks long. There's a

bank, a water tower, and a nine ton ball of twine entombed in a plexiglass gazebo.

So it says, world's largest ball of twine made by one man.

It's very round, very round and nicely shaped.

It's hard to get a good look from the outside because of the reflection of the glass.

But once you press your face up against those windows, you'll see this enormous. the ball is the

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