Invent

Tara Lemméy
  • 4.8 (20)
  • Society & Culture
  • Updated Biweekly

Invent is about how to make things that don’t exist yet. A man in a chicken suit at a Padres game, who figured out what to do during the timeouts and invented what every mascot does now. A woman who proved Newton wrong and finished her manuscript the day she died. A pathologist who saw something in a stomach that couldn’t be there, and wrote it down anyway. Every week, somebody who saw a thing everyone agreed was impossible and found the way through. Inventors see the world sideways, and sideways is where the answer is. Hosted by Tara Lemméy. She invents things that don’t exist. Her biggest inventions were never patentable — like architecting the intelligence sharing system still used across the US intelligence community. Featured on Apple Podcasts, March 2026. New episodes Mondays.

  1. Jun 15

    Enter Laughing

    Two pirates sail to an island looking for treasure. They find none. So one of them bans the letter O — first from speech, then from objects, then from existence. And slowly, the island forgets how to rebel. You can outlaw a word, a book, a name — but it's hard to outlaw the thing that makes people laugh. The joke carries the idea past the guard. The laugh is how it survives long enough to matter. This is an episode about the people who kept freedom alive by keeping us laughing — and who understood that you can't invent in a place that's afraid to speak. The first act of invention is language. A Fourth of July episode about laughter, words, and the freedom to imagine what doesn't exist yet.

  2. May 31

    What's an Enemy, Really?

    In CPR training they give you a song. Not a number — a song. Dr. Alson Inaba figured out that the beat that saves a life is the same beat across disco, country, and funk. Sheldon Kaplan understood the same principle. He just came at it from a different direction. In 1973 the Pentagon needed a solution for soldiers. Fast. No training. Works through clothing. A soldier alone, seconds to act, no help coming. Kaplan built it. Then he looked at what he’d made and asked a different question. A peanut. A bee sting. A latex glove. Same mechanism. Different enemy. Same solution. He called it the EpiPen. He never collected a penny in royalties. The drug inside costs about a dollar. This is Invent. How to make things that don’t exist yet.

  3. May 18

    The Map Is Not the Territory

    When I moved to San Francisco I had to find the water all over again. So I bought a Thomas Guide. Street by street, grid by grid, I built the city out. After about a year I didn’t need the book. San Francisco was inside me. George Coupland Thomas made the Thomas Guide in Oakland in 1915. The map transferred. It got inside you. The best tools build the person

  4. May 4

    Jane Jacobs — Witnessing Is Inventing

    I sit at restaurant window tables for a reason. I watch what's happening out there. I make up stories. Kids do this too. Jane Jacobs was a journalist with three kids on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village. One night she's up with a baby, sitting in the dark, listening to the street. She noticed it was never empty. Nobody told those people to be there. Nobody coordinated it. She called it the sidewalk ballet. She spent years working out what she'd seen. Then she wrote it down. The planning profession hated it. She had no degree. The book is still in print. She just watched. uJbio3sbQkcMLl5oR2Dx

  5. Apr 28

    The Cable That Was Already Listening

    My phone screamed at me at 3am. Earthquake alert. I’m NERT-trained. I know what to do. This time it was a 4.6. This time. Nokia Bell Labs was trying to find where undersea cables break. What they found instead: the cable carrying your internet across the Pacific Ocean had been sensing earthquakes, tsunamis, and whales for decades. Nobody had read it yet. This is the story of Mikael Mazur, an excavator, and the invention that just gave the Cascadia Subduction Zone a lot more warning time. The cable was already there. We just learned how to read it.

  6. Apr 14

    Jaws

    For a hundred years of surfing, twenty feet was the limit. Not a rule. Physics. Human arms can’t generate enough speed to catch a wave that fast. In 1992, Laird Hamilton, Buzzy Kerbox, and Darrick Doerner had a Zodiac and a rope. One afternoon on the North Shore changed what surfing could ever be. This is a story about what happens when you change the method instead of the effort. How to make things that don’t exist yet. 10 minutes.

  7. Apr 2

    The Salt Window

    There’s a salt shaker on your breakfast table. The raw material that could free the energy transition from a single supply chain is in it. China makes 80% of the world’s battery cells. The chemistry to change that is solved. The materials are in Wyoming, Kenya, Turkey — and dozens of places besides. The window to build something different is open. It won’t wait. 8 minutes.

  8. Mar 20

    The Swamp Cooler — What Your Environment Already Wants to Do

    The Swamp Cooler — What Your Environment Already Wants to Do There’s a box on almost every roof in Tucson. No compressor. No refrigerant. Eighty percent less energy than air conditioning. Oscar Palmer built it in 1908. It’s still running in 200,000 buildings. He didn’t invent a new principle. He just stopped fighting his environment long enough to ask what it already wanted to do. That question is available to you right now. Wherever you are.

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About

Invent is about how to make things that don’t exist yet. A man in a chicken suit at a Padres game, who figured out what to do during the timeouts and invented what every mascot does now. A woman who proved Newton wrong and finished her manuscript the day she died. A pathologist who saw something in a stomach that couldn’t be there, and wrote it down anyway. Every week, somebody who saw a thing everyone agreed was impossible and found the way through. Inventors see the world sideways, and sideways is where the answer is. Hosted by Tara Lemméy. She invents things that don’t exist. Her biggest inventions were never patentable — like architecting the intelligence sharing system still used across the US intelligence community. Featured on Apple Podcasts, March 2026. New episodes Mondays.

Information

  • Creator
    Tara Lemméy
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    20
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Tara Lemméy
  • Show Website
    Invent