Top Billing

ROMAN MARS: This is 99% Invisible. I’m Roman Mars. In 1987, Touchstone Pictures released a buddy comedy called Outrageous Fortune.

JACOB REED: Outrageous Fortune wasn’t a flop, but it was overshadowed by some of the year’s bigger movies: Robocop, Predator, Three Men and a Baby…

ROMAN MARS: That’s producer Jacob Reed.

JACOB REED: The main reason I know about Outrageous Fortune is a bizarre rumor I heard in film school–a rumor about how the stars were credited.

ROMAN MARS: The film starred Shelley Long and Bette Midler, or maybe it was Bette Midler and Shelly Long. It depends who you ask.

JACOB REED: Supposedly, the studio somehow promised both actresses they’d be the top billed star of the film, and it got pretty contentious. Here’s Bette Midler doing a Q&A the following year.

ASKER: You and Shelly Long were great together in Outrageous Fortune. I was wondering if you guys were going to work together again.

BETTE MIDLER: I don’t think so. No, I don’t think so.

ASKER: Did you enjoy working with her?

BETTE MIDLER: It was pretty rough. It was rough.

JACOB REED: The rumor about Outrageous Fortune is they could never decide who got top billing and ended up releasing two different cuts–one where Bette Midler’s name comes first and one where the first name is Shelley Long.

ROMAN MARS: To satisfy the two stars, the studio allegedly created two versions of the film and released them on opposite sides of the country. The East Coast got Shelly Long as the top billed star. And on the West coast, Bette Midler was the top billed star.

JACOB REED: And releasing two cuts of a film at the same time–that’s almost never done. I know because I’m a director and a graphic designer, so I’ve done a little work in title design for my own films and I’ve designed title sequences for other people. They can get messy, but it always gets figured out by the final cut.

ROMAN MARS: Deciding who gets top billing in a movie can be a delicate balancing act because when you’re watching the opening credits to a movie, it’s not just a list of names. What you’re actually seeing is intense negotiations by Hollywood stars and their agents playing out in text form. Title designers have to create something that’s entertaining to watch while also presenting the names of all the creative people in a very particular order. It’s like a game of Tetris to make sure everyone gets their due.

JACOB REED: Hollywood agents, producers, and studios decide who gets top billing in a movie. But it’s title designers who figure out how to represent that information visually.

LOLA LANDEKIC: What I do is I look at the history and the breadth of this art form because it truly has been an art form that has existed since the dawn of cinema.

JACOB REED: That’s Lola Landekic. She runs one of my favorite websites.

LOLA LANDEKIC: I’m the editor in chief of Art of the Title, an online resource and archive for title, sequence design in film, TV, and beyond.

ROMAN MARS: Art of the Title is a visual encyclopedia of title sequences that counts directors like Ava DuVerney, David Fincher, and Guillermo del Toro among its fans.

JACOB REED: One thing I love about title sequences is how they use design to artfully and efficiently set up story elements for the movie or TV show.

LOLA LANDEKIC: You especially see this in TV because each episode is meant to begin with the same sequence, so you watch it over and over, so it’s sort of meant to get you into the world–get you right into the tone.

ROMAN MARS: Title sequences can be metaphorical.

JACOB REED: Like in Mad Men–an enigmatic figure tries to maintain control as he spirals from the height of the 1960s Madison Avenue advertising industry as it falls apart in his wake.

ROMAN MARS: Title sequences can also be a detailed guide to the show you’re about to watch.

JACOB REED: Like each season of Game of Thrones, where an intricate map helps viewers keep track of the complicated locations, characters, and plot points.

ROMAN MARS: And of course, title sequences can also be literal.

JACOB REED: Like the opening sequence from the miniseries Little Fires Everywhere.

KARIN FONG: Big idea. We were going to start a lot of little fires. We’re going to burn their props–their key props.

JACOB REED: Karin Fong is a title designer who led the team that created the opening sequence for the miniseries Little Fires Everywhere. It’s an evocative sequence where multiple items burn to a crisp in slow motion.

KARIN FONG: We did the last day of the shoot, when they didn’t need the props anymore obviously. We took their key props–key items–that were very important to the plot in the story, and we lit them on fire.

JACOB REED: To Karin, the job of a title sequence is setting tone and, maybe more importantly, setting audience expectations.

KARIN FONG: As a title designer, I believe my primary goal is to set the audience up for what they’re about to see–to set a tone and set an emotion. and it’s almost like creating a portal into another world, right? It’s a kind of ritualized way of entering a story space.

ROMAN MARS: But while setting the tone is important, title sequences primarily exist to give us information. Here’s Lola Landekic.

LOLA LANDEKIC: Title design is primarily a vessel for information. That’s why it’s a design rather than necessarily what we would consider a kind of standalone fine art. It’s a project created to serve a larger work.

JACOB REED: A title sequence can be creative, it can be clever, but the primary goal is to give the list of credits. Early in her career, Karin learned this lesson working for legendary comedy director Harold Ramis. Karin was trying to get fancy with the typography in the title sequence for one of his movies, and Ramis didn’t like that.

KARIN FONG: And just Harold Ramis just looked at me once during a screening, and he said, “Karin, people need to see their names.” So, that was just a lesson, too. It’s like, “Oh, right. We can do all these things for the mood. But at a fundamental level, we are showing the cast and crew names.”

ROMAN MARS: All title projects include guidelines. But with Hollywood egos involved, title designers need to be very careful how names are laid out since there are always a series of negotiated placements that have to be respected.

DANIEL MCDILL: I would describe film credits as potentially the most hotly negotiated term in a performers contract.

JACOB REED: That’s Daniel McDill, an entertainment attorney who focuses on film production.

DANIEL MCDILL: An agent or a talent attorney and production counsel will negotiate three-second, type eight font credit for weeks, trying to get the performer the best position possible.

JACOB REED: I’ve designed title sequences for features. And let me tell you, it is wild how many requirements there are. One actor’s contract might say same size and type as other leads. But then the lead actor’s contract says no less than the size of the director’s title. And the DGA, which is the Director’s Guild, requires the director’s title be no less than 50% of the film’s title. And it is a mess!

DANIEL MCDILL: Everyone wants to be first. Top billing is the best credit–usually before title. So, if you’re on your own card–that means you’re by yourself before the title–and you’re number one, you have, most of the time, the best position possible. They call that “top billed star.”

JACOB REED: Like Bette Midler and Shelley Long in Outrageous Fortune.

ROMAN MARS: Or Shelley Long and Bette Midler in Outrageous Fortune.

JACOB REED: Beyond top billing, the hierarchy is usually dictated by the size of the role and the name recognition of the actor–with all the major characters in the main title sequence and everyone else in the end credit scroll. “One exception,” Daniel says, “is that, within a whole bunch of names, any name that stands out can be valuable–the first, the last, and then any modifiers, like ‘introducing’ or ‘featuring.'”

DANIEL MCDILL: Sometimes you’ll see the last credit is “and Robert De Niro” or “with Dame Judi Dench.” These are very prolific established actors, but they’re not top billed. And you’re probably wondering why wouldn’t they be first. A lot of the times we reserve the “and” credit or “with” credit for a prominent, established, esteemed performer who’s not a star of the film.

JACOB REED: Top billing can go along with better career prospects, more money, and a big reputational boost. Actors want the credit they deserve because they haven’t always gotten it.

ROMAN MARS: In the early days of the Hollywood studio system, actors were signed to yearslong contracts as repertory players for a studio. Those studios could decide what roles they could play and had total control over an actor’s career and image. But over time, actors won more autonomy.

DANIEL MCDILL: If you look at the egos behind these positions that they’re taking, it’s kind of reclaiming yourself, your profession, and your craft. And if fighting over a credit position helps you do that, it’s legitimate in the sense that when you look at a $400 million movie, you want to get as much of that as you can.

JACOB REED: A big part of a title designer’s job–whether they like it or not–is being the last stop on the legal train. They’re the ones who turn specific legal negotiations into something that holds an audience’s attention. Here’s Karin Fong again.

KARIN FONG: When we get a title sequence project, there is a legal document or there’s a credit list that has all the specs of the credits.

ROMAN MARS: This document is essentially a blueprint that lists all the specs for credit sequence, including order, sizing requirements, and anything else the studio, production companies, agents, and guilds have agreed on.

JACOB REED: My guild–the Director’s Guild of America–requires that a director must be listed closest to the title of a project.

KARIN FONG: So, when you see a main title, the director’s name is always last. But if you’re seeing an end title, the movie ends and “directed by” comes up.

JACOB REED: So, you have this whole list of requirements, which Karin says can be several pages in a Word doc with two columns–the actual title or name on the left, and then any corresponding legal requirements on the right. It is incredibly thorough. Lola and I watched the title sequence of one of my favorite movies, The Fugitive. And it has a particularly interesting design challenge.

SAMUEL GERARD: What I want out of each and every one of you is a hard target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse, or doghouse in that area…

LOLA LANDEKIC: Jones and Ford appear before the main title, which tells you that they both have top billing. Both of their names are very clearly made to be the exact size of the title. This is something that you see a lot–especially in the ’80s and ’90s–with, like, lead action stars. Bruce Willis, Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan–they would often have stipulations in their contracts saying that their name has to appear 100% the size of the title of the film.

ROMAN MARS: Which is challenging since not all names are created equal. The Fugitive is 12 characters, Harrison Ford is 13, and Tommy Lee Jones is 15.

JACOB REED: To make them all the same size, the title designers did an interesting thing where the letters turned to reveal the first and last names of each actor. And the letters subtly stretch out. And despite the different character count, it’s pretty seamless.

LOLA LANDEKIC: There’s a flashlight going through the text, kind of beginning that theme of investigation and darkness and trying to seek the truth. So, everything’s on point.

JACOB REED: The toughest title design challenge is when two stars both want top billing–the Bette Midler and Shelly Long situation–because there’s only one name that can actually be first on a list.

ROMAN MARS: For decades, this was a central conundrum of title design. No one could settle on the best way to do it because no matter what was tried, one star’s name would inevitably just look better than the other. In the end, a solution was found–on a beloved, 1970s network comedy.

DANIEL MCDILL: What we call in the industry normally is a “Laverne & Shirley.” I learned that in law school, and I had to look up what Laverne & Shirley was. So, I didn’t know the show. But I knew about the title sequence before I knew about the show.

LAVERNE & SHIRLEY: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!

JACOB REED: Laverne & Shirley was a sitcom that ran for eight seasons on ABC, from 1976 to 1983, starring Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams. Hearing the music, you might picture the two of them skipping through the streets of Milwaukee to their job at a beer bottling factory.

NICK ABDO: This is shot at the brewery in Van Nuys. I think originally, in the outline, they were just walking down the street. and then the girls–again–they were like, “Well, I don’t want to do that. That’s kind of boring.” So, they did their little skip, and that became the thing.

JACOB REED: I got to watch the Laverne & Shirley title sequence with producer Nick Abdo. And he worked on the show from 1976 to ’78. One of his first jobs was as an associate producer on Happy Days.

NICK ABDO: There was an episode of Happy Days where they were dating. Richie ended up dating Shirley, and Fonzie was dating Laverne. And they scored really big; I mean, the audience loved them. The network says, “Well, why can’t we do a show about them?”

ROMAN MARS: The producers took all the Laverne and Shirley parts from the Happy Days episode, edited that together, and then filled in some other scenes to make a pilot.

JACOB REED: The network loved the pilot, but there was a practical issue getting the show off the ground. Both actresses wanted top billing. Sound familiar? According to Nick, this had never come up before in TV.

NICK ABDO: No. No, I think this was the first one.

ROMAN MARS: With up and coming actors based on characters that organically developed on another show, there wasn’t a clear way to establish the hierarchy of the credits.

JACOB REED: One idea was to switch the names every week.

NICK ABDO: At some point, there’s going to be a mistake, they’re going to put the wrong one, and then there’s going to be a big lawsuit. How can we solve this now? Let’s troubleshoot it before it’s trouble.

JACOB REED: According to Nick, one of his colleagues had a flash of inspiration for how to fix this.

NICK ABDO: And I don’t know who it was that came up with it. It might’ve been Eddie Milkis. I’m not sure. He said, “Well, why don’t we put the left bottom and the top right?”

ROMAN MARS: This was a major turning point in title design.

JACOB REED: You have one name top right, the other name bottom left. Imagine the hands of a clock at 2:00 and 7:00. Top right–bottom left.

ROMAN MARS: When it comes to design, there are a couple of givens. In English, we read text top to bottom, left to right, and big to small. This kind of title card split means two names can be given roughly equal prominence. Here’s Karin Fong.

KARIN FONG: Because then they’re splitting the difference, right? One person’s lower, but the first’s read on the left. And one person is higher and is on the right side, which is the second position when you’re going left to right. So, it’s evening it out, right? If somebody was top and left, that would definitely be the first thing you’d read. And the first position in the hierarchy of titles is the superior position.

JACOB REED: So, as far as I could tell, Laverne & Shirley wasn’t the first project to do this. You could actually see it in the 1974 film The Towering Inferno. Bottom left is Steve McQueen. Top right is Paul Newman. But in Hollywood, everyone associates this kind of title with Laverne & Shirley. These days, it’s pretty common to see Laverne & Shirley titles. The entertainment industry has been going through enormous changes over the last decade. And while everyone we asked had different reasons about why stars are sharing cards more often, today the Laverne & Shirley layout is everywhere, especially on television.

LOLA LANDEKIC: In The Last of Us, for Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal, and a lot of things like that that very clearly have two major stars… I think even May December has a similar layout for Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman.

JACOB REED: There’s Damien Lewis and Paul Giamatti in Billions, Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston in The Morning Show, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in True Detective, Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch in Sherlock… Oh yeah! And Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon in Little Fires Everywhere. Previously on Little Fires Everywhere, we were talking about the little fires. They’re everywhere. They’re even burning up a Laverne & Shirley title card with Reese Witherspoon and Carrie Washington on it.

KARIN FONG: That was pretty obvious, I think, from the front. From the very first credit list, they were always double billed or equal billing. To get them equal, one person’s lower to the left and one person’s upper to the right.

JACOB REED: Giving two people top billing seems like it shouldn’t be possible. And for a long time, it wasn’t–until Laverne & Shirley codified a simple solution to a Hollywood problem. But as I reported this story, something kept eating at me. The Laverne & Shirley Compromise was invented in the 1970s. Why wouldn’t they use it for outrageous fortune 10 years later? Remember–the movie where Shelley Long and Bette Midler fought over top billing? Was the rumor really true about two different releases? I had to get to the bottom of what is maybe the greatest mystery in all of title design. I got in touch with reps for both Midler and Long, but they declined to comment. I watched the movie on streaming. But if there were multiple versions of the film, it’s likely only one was digitized. So, I went to the pantheon of arcane cinema knowledge. I’m talking, of course, about a video store.

MATT BOOTH: My name’s Matt Booth. I’m the owner of Videodrome, the last video store in Atlanta, Georgia.

MILLIE DE CHIRICO: And my name is Millie De Chirico. I was a former employee of Videodrome.

MATT BOOTH: Millie didn’t say this, but she was also a programmer at TCM.

ROMAN MARS: For those who don’t know, that’s Turner Classic Movies.

MILLIE DE CHIRICO: Yeah.

JACOB REED: Okay, so just to recap here, the rumor about Outrageous Fortune isn’t just that both actresses were promised top billing. The bigger story here is the completely bizarre way the studio honored that deal.

MATT BOOTH: They came to this sort of compromise where they divided the United States down the middle and created two separate releases. Bette Midler would take the West Coast and be the top billing, and Shelley Long would be the top billing on the East Coast.

MILLIE DE CHIRICO: “Let’s use the Mississippi River as the dividing line between who was going to be on top for this release.” I mean, that is wild to me.

ROMAN MARS: Depending on which side of the Mississippi you saw in the film, supposedly the newspaper ads, the posters, the movie marquee, and even the title sequence of Outrageous Fortune was different.

MILLIE DE CHIRICO: The cover is very iconic. It’s kind of the two of them holding onto the edge of a cliff. There’s a helicopter below. Their nails are on point from hanging on to this cliff.

MATT BOOTH: The cover is actually reversed–the art is reversed–on the different releases. So, they’re switched in their places depending on who was billed on the two separate releases.

JACOB REED: It’s the kind of solution that only worked in the pre-internet age–like a two-timing Lothario telling two women that they were his number one and hoping they just never found out about each other, which by the way happens to be the plot of Outrageous Fortune! To find out if there was any validity to this rumor, we asked Matt and Millie to find and watch multiple copies of the film in the middle of the video store.

MILLIE DE CHIRICO: Alright. So, we are here to run an experiment on both versions of Outrageous Fortune. Two LaserDiscs. One of the LaserDiscs has Shelley Long’s name and Shelley Long’s body on the cover art on the left. And then the other one is flipped. Then we have two VHS covers.

MATT BOOTH: So, we’ve got one working LaserDisc player. We have two VHS players, and we have two monitors. We’re going to sort of pop each movie in at the same time, and we’re going to check the credit sequence to see if it matches the cover boxes.

JACOB REED: As Matt and Millie fired up their LaserDiscs–a technology that was introduced when a movie ticket costs $2.75–something occurred to me.

MILLIE DE CHIRICO: It’s a PSA. Oh, man. I have trailers on the beginning of mine?

MATT BOOTH: And she’s got trailers.

MILLIE DE CHIRICO: Good Morning, Vietnam trailer is playing on mine.

JACOB REED: Even with the existence of a practical design solution in the Laverne & Shirley Compromise, the Outrageous Fortune story is kind of perfect.

MATT BOOTH: Mine’s Bette Midler.

MILLIE DE CHIRICO: Shelley Long!

MATT BOOTH: This one has Shelley Long at the top.

MILLIE DE CHIRICO: Oh, my God! What in the world?

JACOB REED: Because in the end, no design solution can totally account for Hollywood egos.

MILLIE DE CHIRICO: Shelley Long is first!

MATT BOOTH: And this one had Bette Midler.

MILLIE DE CHIRICO: Bette Midler on the top!

ROMAN MARS: More with Jacob Reed and some of our favorite opening title sequences after this… So, we’re back with Jacob Reed. Well, thank you so much for doing that story with us. We talked a lot about the technical, legal aspects of title design. But I know you want to talk about some of the more artistic parts of title design.

JACOB REED: Yes, I am a huge title design geek. And getting to talk to someone like Karin Fong who works at Imaginary Forces–I could have talked to her forever. I mean, they’ve worked on Counterpart, which is one of my favorite shows ever, Spider-Man: No Way Home… Her team also did Stranger Things and South Park. I mean, Mad Men… They’ve done it all, and she has just so many good stories.

ROMAN MARS: Okay, like what?

JACOB REED: Okay, so did you ever watch the show Boardwalk Empire?

ROMAN MARS: No. I’ve been told it’s great, but I’ve missed that one.

JACOB REED: It’s a great show. And it has this iconic title sequence where Steve Buscemi is kind of just looking out at the Atlantic Ocean and then just a bunch of bottles wash up on the shore.

ROMAN MARS: Oh, that might be the one thing I have seen of Boardwalk Empire.

JACOB REED: That’s all you got to know. There’s some story, but that’s mostly what it is for however many seasons. Well, it’s this iconic title sequence. And what’s so funny is, in talking to Karin, I learned that was not her pitch at all. She had this whole other idea that had come from seeing the set for the first time.

KARIN FONG: He would go to Brooklyn, and there’d be these shipping containers. And then, lo and behold, you go around just past the shipping containers to the outside world. It was the set, and it was this full-on boardwalk. He would go inside the candy store, and there’s a taffy machine that works. And everything was completely dressed so you could shoot from inside to outside. And so, the original ideas all had to do with showing off this amazing place that all of the researchers and production designers and costumers had made.

JACOB REED: So, that was Karin’s original idea. But the show’s creator, Terry Winter, really wanted to focus on introducing Buscemi’s character because he’s kind of, like, the center of the show. And at first they couldn’t do that because–I don’t know–it was, like, a scheduling thing or something. But then he became available. And I think they actually had started prepping the shoot for this entire other opening. And then they pivoted to just focus on Steve Buscemi.

KARIN FONG: Suddenly, it was all about him and his point of view–the central idea being that the world was ever-changing but he was always going to be in the center of it. And this is also something that speaks to being a tile designer. And this is something, when I’m working with the team, we’re always pondering. What do we do to make this show ownable? If you create a title sequence and it can go on another show, then it’s not specific enough. What makes Boardwalk Empire different? And one thing that did make a difference is that it was a story that took place on the Atlantic City–on the sea–which made it such a fertile place for all the rum-running. And this is during Prohibition, and so the fortune of the city and of our main character was tied very much to smuggling liquor via the ocean. And so, he looks out. And the bigger idea was he looks out and sees hundreds of bottles of whiskey floating. And that was really fun and a lesson for me just to be like, “It’s not our job to show what’s in the show.” Our job isn’t to duplicate. We’re supposed to compliment it. We’re supposed to lead into it. A title isn’t a trailer.

JACOB REED: Karin also talked about some of her first experiences watching title sequences being the interstitials on Sesame Street. And she had this cool, full circle moment when they parodied Boardwalk Empire as Birdwalk Empire.

KARIN FONG: That was one of the highlights of my career. Instead of the liquor bottles in the water, there were saltines floating in the sea. And it was Big Bird’s feet instead of Steve Buscemi’s on the sand.

NUCKY DUCKY: Alright, Quackers. Follow me. We’re going to take a walk on the Birdwalk.

QUACKER: Whatever you say, Nucky Ducky. You’re the boss. Alright, you heard ’em. Move it!

ROMAN MARS: That’s Birdwalk Empire. I love it.

JACOB REED: It’s great. Roman, do you have any favorite TV or movie title sequences?

ROMAN MARS: I mean, the first one that really knocked me flat was the title sequence to Se7en because it was doing so much work. It was really trying to solve this problem of introducing the serial killer. You don’t end up encountering him in the movie for an hour or so into it. Do you have a favorite of your own?

JACOB REED: I don’t know if it’s a favorite, but I’ve been rewatching Dexter a lot recently. And I think it’s a great title sequence, right?

ROMAN MARS: It’s really good.

JACOB REED: So, it’s basically him making breakfast in the morning. But everything–these mundane… You know, cracking an egg, pouring Tabasco onto toast, pulling a shirt over his head, flossing with the string of the floss tied up in his hands like he’s about to choke someone–it takes all of these mundane things and gives them the serial killer treatment. And it just puts you in exactly the right mindset for the show.

ROMAN MARS: It’s brilliant. I totally love that one. Dead on. Well, this is awesome. It is fun talking about title sequences. I can see why people, like the Art of the Title folks, just have devoted their lives to these.

JACOB REED: Oh, yeah. I mean, we should plug that. I don’t know if we’re allowed to plug stuff, but we should plug that website. The Art of the Title is one of my favorite websites ever. And if you’re a graphic designer or a filmmaker–really anyone for inspiration–even if you’re just a film fan, it’s really cool.

ROMAN MARS: That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jacob. I really had fun.

JACOB REED: Yeah. Thank you. Roman.

ROMAN MARS: 99% Invisible was produced this week by Jacob Reed. Edited by Chris Berube. Fact-checking by Graham Hacia. Mix and sound design by Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid. Music by Swan Reel. Our intern is Nikita Apte.Kathy Tu is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is our digital director. Delaney Hall is the senior editor. The rest of the team includes Jayson De Leon, Emmett FitzGerald, Gabriella Gladney, Martín Gonzalez, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Le, Lasha Madan, Jeyca Maldonado-Medina, Neena Pathak, Kelly Prime, Joe Rosenberg, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence.Special thanks this week to Grace Kallis, Quincy Surasmith, Maya Kroth and Yang Yi. And a very special thanks to Claire Reynolds, and to Matt Booth and the team at Videodrome in Atlanta, who tracked down multiple copies of Outrageous Fortune for our ridiculous experiment. If you’re in the Atlanta area, absolutely you must go check them out. We are part of the Stitcher and SiriusXM Podcast Family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building… in beautiful… uptown… Oakland, California. Home of the Oakland Roots Soccer Club, of which I am a proud community owner. Other teams may come and go, but the Roots are Oakland first–always. You can find us on all the usual social media sites as well as our brand new Discord server. There are over 4,500 people talking about Power Broker, talking about different episodes, and talking about architecture in general. There’s a link to that, as well as every past episode of 99PI, at 99pi.org.