Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time for an
Speaker 2: episode from the Vault. This one originally aired January thirty first,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three. And Rob, this was your interview with
Speaker 2: Roman Mars of the podcast ninety nine Percent Invisible.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Great chat, great podcast, great book. So I hope
Speaker 1: everyone enjoys.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb, and I have an interview for
Speaker 1: you this week that I conducted with none other than
Speaker 1: Roman Mars, the podcast host and author, a host of
Speaker 1: the ninety nine Percent Invisible podcast asked, and co author
Speaker 1: of the book The ninety nine Percent Invisible City. So
Speaker 1: it was it was a real treat to set down
Speaker 1: virtually with Roman Mars here and discuss ninety nine percent Invisible,
Speaker 1: both the podcast and the book The ninety nine Percent
Speaker 1: Invisible City, discussing podcasting in general, design in general. It's
Speaker 1: a fun chat and I hope you enjoy it as
Speaker 1: much as I did. Hi, Roman, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Oh, thank you so much. For having me.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. I want to start by stating the
Speaker 1: obvious that a lot of our listeners stuff to blrow
Speaker 1: your mind, don't really need an introduction or even a
Speaker 1: reintroduction to you and your show. But for anyone out
Speaker 1: there who isn't aware, what is ninety nine percent invisible?
Speaker 1: And what does the title mean?
Speaker 4: Nine percent invisible is about all the thought that goes
Speaker 4: into things most people don't think about. The idea is
Speaker 4: that you know, even these big things like buildings that
Speaker 4: you know, they may be massive, but the story behind
Speaker 4: them is still ninety nine percent of visible. And that's
Speaker 4: where it comes from. I was when I first started,
Speaker 4: it sort of started as a show about architecture and design,
Speaker 4: and it still is. I think design is still its mandate,
Speaker 4: but our vision of what is designed is quite broad,
Speaker 4: sort of any human made thing is designed. And so
Speaker 4: when I first started, I gathered this collection of different
Speaker 4: types of designers, a product designer, an architect, a landscape designer,
Speaker 4: and asked them, like, what is the unifying theme to
Speaker 4: what you do? And I was going to try to
Speaker 4: name the show at what that was, but I didn't
Speaker 4: want to use the word design For some reason. I
Speaker 4: just wanted to avoid it and make something more poetic
Speaker 4: and evocative, and they came to the conclusion that if
Speaker 4: they're doing their jobs right, their job is ninety nine
Speaker 4: percent of visible, and so that's what the show became.
Speaker 1: I think I heard the show for the first time
Speaker 1: on Radio Lab and I had to look it up
Speaker 1: and sort of been back in twenty eleven. YEA.
Speaker 4: They did this a real service by introducing this to
Speaker 4: a lot of people. I mean, Jad and the folks
Speaker 4: who are working on Radio Lab at the time. We
Speaker 4: kind of came up together in the public radio trenches,
Speaker 4: and so that was just about the time when we
Speaker 4: started running the shows, and so I think there was
Speaker 4: a little bit of a backslapping, a friendly you know,
Speaker 4: helping out a brother in arms in that scenario. But
Speaker 4: they did this a real good service of introducing us
Speaker 4: to their audience.
Speaker 1: Radio Lab always impressed me with its exceptional audio production,
Speaker 1: its sound design. I did show that had a particular
Speaker 1: vision for I think how sound design could be used
Speaker 1: to help explain a topic, and I tend to think
Speaker 1: of ninety nine percent invisible as existing, you know, within
Speaker 1: on the same shelf. In the similar category of podcast
Speaker 1: or radio shows. So I was wondering, like, what is
Speaker 1: your philosophy on ninety nine percent invisible sound design?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, it varies. I mean what I like,
Speaker 4: like I like things to be radiophonic, which to me
Speaker 4: means if you were to read a transcript of the show,
Speaker 4: you wouldn't fully get what the show is trying to convey,
Speaker 4: you know, like there has to be the audio element,
Speaker 4: the sound of someone's voice, the sound of someone's passion,
Speaker 4: you know, and then the music and you know, like
Speaker 4: in a little bit of the ambient and field tape,
Speaker 4: you know, tell a different story than just the words
Speaker 4: being said. You know, we just do it to serve
Speaker 4: the story. You know that you can definitely overdo it.
Speaker 4: You can sort of call a lot of attention to
Speaker 4: sound design. I think we sort of pitch it the
Speaker 4: way I personally like it, Like I like a good
Speaker 4: amount of music. I like switching voices, you know, like
Speaker 4: I like, you know, I talk, another person talks, another
Speaker 4: person talks. It keeps the ear interested. I think there's
Speaker 4: some sort of there's ways that when you're conveying information,
Speaker 4: varying that so that the ear doesn't get bored. And
Speaker 4: then you sort of your mind drifts off is really important,
Speaker 4: but we also kind of play it by ear like
Speaker 4: there isn't like a huge I don't know, just like
Speaker 4: a standard operating procedure or a certain mandate that we
Speaker 4: when it comes to sound design. We are really talented,
Speaker 4: you know, composer in Swan Reale and engineer and Martin Gonzalez,
Speaker 4: and you know, they just make it beautiful and it
Speaker 4: just feels good to me. It was always the show
Speaker 4: I always wanted in terms of the way it sounds.
Speaker 1: And have changes your trends in the podcasting industry affected
Speaker 1: the way you approach things at all.
Speaker 4: I don't know about the changes in podcasting. I mean
Speaker 4: you to say that, I mean I like the show
Speaker 4: the way it is because I think it serves the
Speaker 4: way the show is. That is not to say that
Speaker 4: I don't love things that aren't produced to our extent,
Speaker 4: Like my my favorite podcasts are two people talking, you know,
Speaker 4: like and there's something really lovely about that. And so
Speaker 4: to me, there's just always like there are these different
Speaker 4: trends or you know, just like buckets of podcasts that
Speaker 4: do different things and do them well, and I think
Speaker 4: they all can co exist kind of nicely. I mean,
Speaker 4: the main thing that happened with my show is that
Speaker 4: it was really designed for radio, Like I made it
Speaker 4: for public radio. The original episodes are four minutes long
Speaker 4: because they fit into a slot that would go into
Speaker 4: morning edition. And then I was just like, well, I
Speaker 4: guess I'll put this out as a podcast. Is whatever
Speaker 4: might as well, and so we did. And then, you know,
Speaker 4: and I say we, there was no Wei. It was
Speaker 4: just me at this point. For many, many, many years,
Speaker 4: it was just me and so, and then when it
Speaker 4: started to find a life as a podcast, it was like, well,
Speaker 4: let's just keep in that, like, let's make that a
Speaker 4: little bit longer because I don't have to make it
Speaker 4: four minutes when it becomes a podcast, and then it
Speaker 4: gets it just grows and grows and grows, and it eventually,
Speaker 4: you know, a switch flipped where the primary audience was
Speaker 4: the podcast audience, which didn't have to adhere to sometime
Speaker 4: a radio clock, and I was cutting a version for
Speaker 4: the radio, and then it sort of was off to
Speaker 4: the races, and they sort of now every story is
Speaker 4: what it is. And so in a way, podcasting liberated
Speaker 4: me from what is the constraint of like every type
Speaker 4: of broadcast journalist, which is like you're basically either cutting
Speaker 4: to fit a time or feeling to make a time,
Speaker 4: is like a huge part of your job as a producer,
Speaker 4: and I don't really do that anymore based on some
Speaker 4: sort of artificial constraint. I still do that based off
Speaker 4: of my taste, Like I still like things to be
Speaker 4: tight and you know, be purposeful in their length. So
Speaker 4: in that sense, podcasting really really changed and made it so,
Speaker 4: like now the average show is it's like thirty five
Speaker 4: forty minutes long. It's like ten times longer, Like it's
Speaker 4: really it's really something. But this show has kind of
Speaker 4: had its own trajectory that I don't know if it
Speaker 4: really follows the fissitudes of podcasting in general, but I'm
Speaker 4: sure I'm influenced by it some way.
Speaker 1: Anytime I listened to the show or and engage with
Speaker 1: ninety nine percent of visible content, I felt like I
Speaker 1: leave it with my eyes just a little more open
Speaker 1: to the design around me. Do you ever feel like
Speaker 1: or hope that you're initiating listeners into sort of the
Speaker 1: different understanding of the world.
Speaker 4: Oh, for sure, I mean that's the ultimate goal, and
Speaker 4: I know that it's effective because it's been effective with me. Like,
Speaker 4: you know, I study lots of things to get to
Speaker 4: where I am. I've been a journalist now for twenty years,
Speaker 4: but before that, I was working on PhD and genetics.
Speaker 4: I studied a lot of things. I didn't have a
Speaker 4: real specific knowledge of design or architecture. I was just
Speaker 4: a person who would like go on the architecture door
Speaker 4: if I was in a city, you know. And so
Speaker 4: I've always approached it as a journalist and as a fan.
Speaker 4: And I've noticed that the show has changed me over
Speaker 4: the years of making it, Like as I've told these
Speaker 4: stories about all the thought that goes into things that
Speaker 4: most people pass by without noticing, I've felt myself becoming
Speaker 4: more sort of keenly aware of the world and how
Speaker 4: it functions, and actually kind of keenly aware of how
Speaker 4: well we're taken care of in the world in a
Speaker 4: certain way, Like it's turned me into a more optimistic
Speaker 4: person to do this show, because you know, a lot
Speaker 4: of people put a lot of care into things so
Speaker 4: you don't die, like pretty consistently, or so that you
Speaker 4: can operate smoothly in this world. And we bump against
Speaker 4: the things that are poorly designed, and we notice those
Speaker 4: we don't notice the nine hund percent of visible things
Speaker 4: that are so well designed that they pass our notice.
Speaker 4: And so it has changed the way I view the world.
Speaker 4: Making the show and what I've heard from people has
Speaker 4: changed the way that they look at the world. And
Speaker 4: it's super satisfying because I think it, like, it really
Speaker 4: does improve your outlook of the world to think about
Speaker 4: the design of things.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've been doing the show long enough that
Speaker 1: you have listeners out there who have grown up with
Speaker 1: the show, right, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have someone who who works on the show now,
Speaker 4: Jacob Molton, Amandina and her stepfather, you know, had her
Speaker 4: listen to the show as a kid, you know, like
Speaker 4: I think it's like junior higher high school. So yeah,
Speaker 4: it's absurd. Yeah, a lot of people have grown up
Speaker 4: with it and it's it's it's pretty satisfying to have them.
Speaker 4: But when they show up in there in their twenties,
Speaker 4: I'm blown away by that.
Speaker 1: So now I guess on the other end of the spectrum,
Speaker 1: you still have people coming to the podcast who are
Speaker 1: new to it. Of course, covered so many designs topics
Speaker 1: over the years. I wonder what your recommendation is for
Speaker 1: people who are new to it, Like, I know, on
Speaker 1: your website at ninety nine percent invisible dot orgue, you
Speaker 1: have a nice explorer section that allows you to sort
Speaker 1: of check out areas by topic, but in general, like,
Speaker 1: do you tend to steer people towards the beginning, towards
Speaker 1: the most recent or particular foundational episode.
Speaker 4: Never in the beginning, Like I feel like when people
Speaker 4: tell me that they've gone back and listened to all
Speaker 4: of them, I'm like, oh, maybe I should take those
Speaker 4: down because I don't know if it's worth it. But
Speaker 4: I think that I mostly say to listen to the
Speaker 4: most recent one. I mean, the thing about an ongoing
Speaker 4: series is that no one episode can sort of encapsulate
Speaker 4: what you do. What you do with an ongoing series
Speaker 4: as you're telling this story over time, and it's like
Speaker 4: this weird regression plot where it's like, here's an episode
Speaker 4: kind of like this, and here's an episode kind of
Speaker 4: like this, and then you draw a line that regression
Speaker 4: plot and that is the thesis of your show. And
Speaker 4: so no one point, you know, like really exemplifies that,
Speaker 4: you know, especially you know, especially when you know as
Speaker 4: makers you're like, well, that's like that's about an eighty
Speaker 4: percent of what I wanted it to be, or you
Speaker 4: know whatever. And so mostly I tell people to listen
Speaker 4: to the latest one, and you know, we have a
Speaker 4: few classics, like there's this one called Structural Integrity that
Speaker 4: won a lot of awards that I think is a
Speaker 4: is a good episode about you know, building almost falling down,
Speaker 4: and you know, that's always exciting. And what I don't
Speaker 4: want people who do is in the beginning, I think
Speaker 4: it's fine to go search through things that you know
Speaker 4: you're interested in and go listen to them. But almost
Speaker 4: the point of the show is that we're daring you
Speaker 4: with how boring the subject is. And what we're trying
Speaker 4: to do is, you know, is the production is sort
Speaker 4: of creating this delta between how boring an idea is
Speaker 4: and how we're going to present it to make it
Speaker 4: so that you really, really truly care about it. And
Speaker 4: so don't read the description and go, nah, that's not
Speaker 4: for me. Like try if you read description and go
Speaker 4: that's not for me, try just one of those and
Speaker 4: see if I can convince you that this is interesting
Speaker 4: and applies to you in some way. That's that's the
Speaker 4: main thing I want from people when they try the
Speaker 4: show out.
Speaker 1: Now I'm a little late to the party here, but
Speaker 1: I recently picked up a copy of the book The
Speaker 1: ninety nine Percent Invisible City that you co authored with
Speaker 1: Kirk Colstead, and it's Yeah, it's a thoroughly enjoyable and
Speaker 1: insightful read, you know, highlighting the details of the modern
Speaker 1: world and get going and matching over with what you
Speaker 1: just said, there were you know, there were certainly sections
Speaker 1: of it that I knew that I was going to
Speaker 1: be into, into anything dealing with say like underground infrastructure,
Speaker 1: and like the whole section on infrastructure disguised his building
Speaker 1: and so forth. But yeah, there's so much in it
Speaker 1: where suddenly there'll be a section of the of the
Speaker 1: book that is dealing with something that I completely take
Speaker 1: for granted sometimes every day, and it's ultimately a fascinating
Speaker 1: and eliminating topic, like like traffic circles for example.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean that's the goal is that we sort
Speaker 4: of like we could lure you in with some things
Speaker 4: that you might be interested in, and and then we
Speaker 4: sort of lull you into trying to pay attention to
Speaker 4: other things. And the book was really interesting to make
Speaker 4: because I've been making audio for so long, and you know,
Speaker 4: I think I feel like I was approached about making
Speaker 4: a book, like episode five of the podcast. There was
Speaker 4: this sort of sense that books are the inevitable, like
Speaker 4: I don't know, prize or something like that. I didn't
Speaker 4: understand that. I just I really wanted to make a podcast,
Speaker 4: and so but it took us for a long time
Speaker 4: to do it. One of the reasons was, you know,
Speaker 4: the partnership and making it with with Colestead required that,
Speaker 4: you know, we work on it and be excited about it.
Speaker 4: And then the other was like, I'm really into design,
Speaker 4: like in a real sense, and to me, it's like
Speaker 4: the show is designed to be a podcast, and trying
Speaker 4: to you know, creating some kind of deprecated, you know,
Speaker 4: transcription version of it was had no interest to me.
Speaker 4: But there was a certain point where the volume of
Speaker 4: the things that we covered audio is not really useful
Speaker 4: for like scrubbing through and like it's experiential, but it's
Speaker 4: not like, oh, I remember this thing about curb cuts.
Speaker 4: What's the name of that episode and where do I
Speaker 4: find it and what is it? And do I have
Speaker 4: twenty minutes to listen to it? And stuff, and there
Speaker 4: was just a point where all the stuff that we
Speaker 4: had covered and the sort of territory we've staked out
Speaker 4: of our view of the world wasn't being served by
Speaker 4: linear audio anymore, and a book was kind of like
Speaker 4: felt like it was natural and necessary and good.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 4: That's what the book became. And so and it has
Speaker 4: a lot of stuff that's from the show in it,
Speaker 4: but also a lot of like new stuff that we
Speaker 4: can't cover because you know, like as much as I
Speaker 4: enjoy the perversity of covering a lot of visual stuff
Speaker 4: in an audio medium to highlight the storiness of it
Speaker 4: versus the esthetics of things, there's some things that are
Speaker 4: just impossible to cover, and things like roundabouts where you
Speaker 4: try to describe the magic roundabout, which is like circles
Speaker 4: and circles and circles, and it's like you can kind
Speaker 4: of get it, but I don't know if you can
Speaker 4: really visualize it until you know, you get some pictures
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that was definitely a part of in the
Speaker 1: book where I was very thankful for the illustration. And
Speaker 1: there's plenty of other places where you're talking about something
Speaker 1: and you can look at the illustration, Like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that one, that's what they're talking about. I've seen that thing,
Speaker 1: that particular star shape or whatever the case may.
Speaker 4: Be, exactly exactly. It does require a little bit of
Speaker 4: a little bit of help.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's interesting that it sounded like it was
Speaker 1: kind of, I don't want to say a daunting task,
Speaker 1: but like a task it.
Speaker 4: Was hugely daunting, horrible. Yeah, it's like it's really really hard.
Speaker 4: There's like there's this the saying that I heard as
Speaker 4: we were making the book that was that a takeoff
Speaker 4: of the teach a man to fish kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Teach a manufih and then yeah, give him anifesi he
Speaker 4: eats for a day, Teach a man official, he'll eat
Speaker 4: for a lifetime. It's uh, give a person a book,
Speaker 4: they'll read for a week. Teach a person to write
Speaker 4: a book, they'll never enjoy anything for the rest of
Speaker 4: their lives. So it's really really hard. But I mean
Speaker 4: like curvely brought it all together. I mean in terms
Speaker 4: of like the writing and the kind of organizing and
Speaker 4: project managing, Like he really threw himself into it in
Speaker 4: a way that it never would happened because one of
Speaker 4: the problems with a really long deadline that a book
Speaker 4: gives you, you know, like a year long deadline. It
Speaker 4: has its own problems, but when you have a weekly
Speaker 4: deadline of a show at the same time, it's it's
Speaker 4: always possible to occupy yourself with the immediate deadline and
Speaker 4: put off the big deadline. And so anyway, it was
Speaker 4: really hard.
Speaker 1: Well, well, like I said, the finished product is excellent,
Speaker 1: and you covered this already. But the I guess when
Speaker 1: one initially hears about a podcast becoming a book, it's
Speaker 1: easy to think, well, okay, this is, like you said, this,
Speaker 1: it's just something that had to happen. This is like
Speaker 1: the inevitable sort of cash in or the inevitable even
Speaker 1: evolution of the thing. But yeah, this this doesn't feel
Speaker 1: forced at all. It's very absorbable and also very just
Speaker 1: visually stylish.
Speaker 4: Thank you. I was really obviously interested in the in
Speaker 4: the visuals of it, and and our publisher was too. They,
Speaker 4: you know, because it was just like you do understand that,
Speaker 4: like designing, people listen to our show and if the
Speaker 4: book is ugly, they will never forgive you. And they
Speaker 4: sort of connected us with Patrick Vale, who is the
Speaker 4: illustrator who worked on, you know, hundreds of different illustrations,
Speaker 4: both big and small, to demonstrate what was going on,
Speaker 4: but also just to kind of set the tone of it.
Speaker 4: You know, the feel of it is is both kind
Speaker 4: of like precise, but also it has a little bit
Speaker 4: of an abstraction to it in some instances. And I
Speaker 4: think it's a beautiful object. And you're always trying to
Speaker 4: figure out what to do when you create anything, or
Speaker 4: are you creating something like a theemeral and immediate or
Speaker 4: you're creating like a permanent and beautiful object. And there's
Speaker 4: a balance of that when it comes to audio all
Speaker 4: the time, because you you could fuss over it endlessly
Speaker 4: to make it a beautiful object, and you know, it's
Speaker 4: kind of fleeting and ephemeral no matter what you do.
Speaker 4: But when you put all the effort into a book,
Speaker 4: it is like it's incumbent. I think to make it,
Speaker 4: I don't know, something somewhat precious because of all these
Speaker 4: just resources going into it, you know. But I'm happy
Speaker 4: with it, even though it had a little bit of
Speaker 4: issue to figure out of being you know, kind of
Speaker 4: fish nor foul, like it isn't really a coffee table book.
Speaker 1: It is a book.
Speaker 4: Of stories. They don't have to be read all together
Speaker 4: in a row, but they build on each other when
Speaker 4: they are read in a row, and you kind of
Speaker 4: had to serve lots of different audiences simultaneously. And again,
Speaker 4: this was something that like Kurt and I had just
Speaker 4: endless meetings about just the structure of the thing, independent
Speaker 4: of the writing, to make it all work. So anyway,
Speaker 4: I'm glad you liked it. I'm sort of going on
Speaker 4: about it.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, this is all fascinating. I have the
Speaker 1: physical version here, and there's a digital version, but there
Speaker 1: is also an audiobook obviously, Yeah, yeah, there is. What
Speaker 1: was what was that like? Then? Turning it back into.
Speaker 4: It was horrible. It's like, I mean, like I've been
Speaker 4: doing voiceover, you know, and narration for twenty some years
Speaker 4: at this point reading an audiobook is the hardest version
Speaker 4: of that, I think, even though and this is my
Speaker 4: own you know, like style and in our own writing,
Speaker 4: so it you know, I know the material better, but
Speaker 4: even that was exhausting. I was realizing how little I
Speaker 4: talk in a row, even when I record narration or
Speaker 4: to do interviews. That like I was like, oh great,
Speaker 4: I'll just knock out a couple of hours of reading
Speaker 4: or whatever, you know, every few days. But I was
Speaker 4: exhausted by it. It was so hard. And when any author,
Speaker 4: and I know a fair number of authors now that
Speaker 4: you know, ask me about, you know, narrating work, I'm
Speaker 4: just like, unless you really want to, like, just avoid it.
Speaker 4: It's really it's really hard. But you know the publishers
Speaker 4: and I know the audience. They're used to the sound
Speaker 4: of my voice. I think for some of them it
Speaker 4: gives them a certain amount of comfort, and it seemed
Speaker 4: important that it be me to read it. So I'm
Speaker 4: glad with the product. I'm glad we did it. I'm
Speaker 4: I'm also glad that we appended an episode of the
Speaker 4: show at the end of the audio book, just because
Speaker 4: part of me felt like, if you went away thinking
Speaker 4: that me reading this book is the show, you don't
Speaker 4: have a full concept what the show is, and so
Speaker 4: I wanted to make sure that was present there. And
Speaker 4: so I think it's a nice thing to happen. And
Speaker 4: I think if somebody's like, oh, I really love nine
Speaker 4: Names Invisible, I want to listen to eleven hours of
Speaker 4: it in a row, it does serve that. But it
Speaker 4: was it was extremely hard. I couldn't believe how hard
Speaker 4: it was. I was so self conscious about it that,
Speaker 4: you know, we had an independent you know company kind
Speaker 4: of cut it together, like who worked for the publisher,
Speaker 4: and I would pre edit it because I would mess
Speaker 4: up so much that I would I would I would
Speaker 4: send like an edited version for them to go edit again,
Speaker 4: because I was just like, I'm not this bad at this,
Speaker 4: Normally I should be. Anyway, I didn't want anyone to
Speaker 4: hear it.
Speaker 1: So the title the ninety nine percent Invisible City to
Speaker 1: just leave open the possibility for future volumes dealing with
Speaker 1: different rays of topics.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was the idea in fact, when we went
Speaker 4: out and pitched it. Originally, I pitched it as kind
Speaker 4: of a set of books, like you know, maybe one
Speaker 4: about cities, maybe one and about sort of roads and
Speaker 4: you know, byways and highways type of thing, and then
Speaker 4: about sort of vernacular architecture and specific to places. We
Speaker 4: ended up sort of like making the city one, like
Speaker 4: incorporate a lot of that stuff already. Like as soon
Speaker 4: as we went out with that, people were like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 4: why don't you just get one book out instead of
Speaker 4: like plan your trilogy and they were totally right. But
Speaker 4: you know, this goes back to the you know, the
Speaker 4: original name to begin with is like I was making
Speaker 4: a show about design, I wanted it to have this
Speaker 4: name nine a percent of Visible, but I thought it
Speaker 4: was so evocative that I could do a season about science.
Speaker 4: I could do a season about something else. There's so
Speaker 4: many things that you know, in terms of explanatory journalism
Speaker 4: that need to be explained better, and most of them
Speaker 4: are pretty invisible to most of us. So it kind
Speaker 4: of applies to a lot of things. And so I
Speaker 4: could totally see you know, a series of books in
Speaker 4: different ways, or a kid's book version or something like that.
Speaker 4: I'm open to it, but it honestly hasn't the internal
Speaker 4: drive is hasn't quite like rebuilt to like say like,
Speaker 4: oh my god, I really want to go through that again.
Speaker 1: Now. The book deals a lot with the space where
Speaker 1: design exists between kind of I guess government and law
Speaker 1: on one side and user desire and experience on the other.
Speaker 1: You've alluded to one half of this earlier talking about
Speaker 1: how Safe for the World feels with a lot of
Speaker 1: the designs we have in place. I know, we can't
Speaker 1: really place a value judgment on design itself. But does
Speaker 1: design seem to largely have a trajectory toward user safety
Speaker 1: and happiness?
Speaker 4: Well, I would say so. I mean, design is about functionality,
Speaker 4: and it sort of depends on what master it is
Speaker 4: serving at a certain moment as to whether or not
Speaker 4: it is serving one type of audience versus another type
Speaker 4: of audience or user rather. And so you know, you
Speaker 4: could say some of those things in the real world
Speaker 4: they work at cross purposes. So, I mean, we just
Speaker 4: did a little segment of an episode that Delaney hol
Speaker 4: did on the show about this idea of strodes, which
Speaker 4: is like a portmanteau between street and roads. And the
Speaker 4: idea here is that a road is a conveyance to
Speaker 4: get someone from one place to the other as quickly
Speaker 4: as possible. A street is a place that you occupy
Speaker 4: and live, and there are stores on it and park
Speaker 4: benches and things like that. And when something is truly
Speaker 4: a road, like a highway to get from one place
Speaker 4: to the other, it works well. When something is truly
Speaker 4: a street and it is for loitering and hanging out
Speaker 4: and to being in places, it works well. When things
Speaker 4: are strodes, when they're designed to go through quickly, but
Speaker 4: they have all these people in the way and stores
Speaker 4: that people are coming in and out of and stuff
Speaker 4: like that. Then they work poorly and they tend to
Speaker 4: be really dangerous. So you could say, well, it was
Speaker 4: designed poorly, or you know, it's sort of a little
Speaker 4: bit semantic, or like how you place the emphasis of it.
Speaker 4: You know, I would say that that's the tyranny of
Speaker 4: thoughtless design creates a strode versus somebody really tried to
Speaker 4: make it this way on purpose, you know, And so
Speaker 4: we do end up with things at the end which
Speaker 4: are poorly designed, that are dangerous, that do not make
Speaker 4: the world a better place. They are probably created from
Speaker 4: a constraint from this type of constituency applying it in
Speaker 4: this way and then another one to this way, and
Speaker 4: it creates this sort of Frankenstein, which is a poorly
Speaker 4: designed thing. And that is a you know, a version
Speaker 4: of cultural and you know product evolution that is a
Speaker 4: result of you know, people putting all their two cents
Speaker 4: in to create something that is not very functional for
Speaker 4: most people. But I do believe that when you do
Speaker 4: think of safety and care of minds, that we do
Speaker 4: a good job of creating those things in the end,
Speaker 4: and actually anticipating things that you may not anticipate and
Speaker 4: hopefully never have to anticipate when you encounter them in
Speaker 4: the real world. You know, like that that they are
Speaker 4: these safety things in place that hopefully just make the
Speaker 4: world a better place, make you safer, but hopefully you
Speaker 4: never have to consider whether or not a sign post
Speaker 4: is a breakaway post, or whether or not trees alone
Speaker 4: the side of the road, you know, like, you know,
Speaker 4: they're there to make you feel crowded so that therefore
Speaker 4: you do not go very fast. You know, they're meant
Speaker 4: to add some agitation to you. Roundabouts, like you mentioned,
Speaker 4: are perfect example. I mean, one of the reasons why
Speaker 4: roundabouts are so safe is because they feel so awful.
Speaker 4: You know, when you enter into one, you have to
Speaker 4: be really aware and being aware and making the built
Speaker 4: environment break you out of your you know, like maybe
Speaker 4: your sort of road zemblification, you know, is a good
Speaker 4: thing for your safety, but it might not feel like
Speaker 4: a good thing when you go through it. But somebody
Speaker 4: thought about that for you. And so for the most part,
Speaker 4: I would say we endeavor to make things safer, but
Speaker 4: there are definitely some gaps and mostly it's when a
Speaker 4: bunch of people are not coming on the same page
Speaker 4: of what the design brief really is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And of course in the in the book you
Speaker 1: talk about some designs such as those intended to keep
Speaker 1: unhomed people from laying on park benches that sort of.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, there's lots of hostile design. And again it's
Speaker 4: serving somebody's purpose, like somebody's putting it there on purpose,
Speaker 4: because they're trying to commit a kind of social change
Speaker 4: and social pressure and influence through the built world. Now,
Speaker 4: the thing is, as privileged people, they're kind of doing
Speaker 4: that for you. You know, they're doing it for your benefit,
Speaker 4: you know, to the detriment of people who have less.
Speaker 4: And the important part about that influence is recognizing do
Speaker 4: you really want that? You know, like somebody's making this
Speaker 4: decision for you, And if if you don't know about it,
Speaker 4: then obviously you can't sort of like you have any commentary.
Speaker 4: So our first job is to make people aware of
Speaker 4: what these spikes and these different sort of like hostile architecture,
Speaker 4: you know, like interventions are, and then the second step
Speaker 4: is to go like, well, is that the result you want?
Speaker 4: And do you want to like interact with your setty
Speaker 4: to change it. You know, it's the second part of
Speaker 4: that discussion.
Speaker 1: You're a Strode example reminded me of of parklets, which
Speaker 1: are also discussed in the book. Yeah, by the time
Speaker 1: the book came out, and certainly by the time of
Speaker 1: my reading it, like everyone, I think, especially in urban areas,
Speaker 1: that heard of parklets to do to their role in
Speaker 1: the pandemic. But this, yeah, this is also an area
Speaker 1: that's between different ideas of what the street or the
Speaker 1: road is used for.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a parklet is a really interesting thing. There's a
Speaker 4: sort of movement here called Parking Day I'm in the
Speaker 4: Bay Area, which sort of pioneered this idea of like, well,
Speaker 4: instead of you know, putting a coin in a meter
Speaker 4: to you know, rent a space for a car, why
Speaker 4: don't we put coins in the meter and like lay
Speaker 4: down some sod and put on put some chairs down.
Speaker 4: And this is something I've covered for I mean for
Speaker 4: like twenty something here years at this point. And then
Speaker 4: it really came to pass when all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: we're in COVID. We wanted to be together, but we
Speaker 4: needed space away from each other and space outside. And
Speaker 4: you know, when it comes to roads, you know, for millennia,
Speaker 4: they've been these loads of multimodal use cases like they
Speaker 4: you know, the people walked on them, people rode bikes
Speaker 4: on them, people rode horses on them, vendors set up
Speaker 4: in the middle of them, and then over time we
Speaker 4: just decided that, oh, they're for cars. You know, you know,
Speaker 4: no one else belongs on them, and you can cross
Speaker 4: here and here, and if you cross anywhere in between,
Speaker 4: you're breaking the law. And and that was where our
Speaker 4: values lied when it came to the design of cities.
Speaker 4: You know, it's not where I would place my personal values,
Speaker 4: but but that's you know, we collectively kind of thought
Speaker 4: that that was a good case. And then COVID comes along,
Speaker 4: and all of a sudden, the value of that space
Speaker 4: changed and we wanted it back, like as pedestrians and
Speaker 4: people and people drinking coffee, and so, you know, we
Speaker 4: decided to bump out these spaces that were used for
Speaker 4: cars so that we could be outside and enjoy things.
Speaker 4: And it was kind of fascinating because you know, the
Speaker 4: book came out right at the kind of beginning of
Speaker 4: COVID in twenty twenty, and it was an interesting time
Speaker 4: to think about the design of cities. When this, you know,
Speaker 4: outside influence made us rethink, you know, how our cities
Speaker 4: should be designed very rapidly, you know, and and thoroughly,
Speaker 4: you know, like because one of the things that happens
Speaker 4: when you're thinking about design or thinking about your city
Speaker 4: is there's a there's kind of a solipsistic kind of
Speaker 4: way we enter the world is the way things are
Speaker 4: and should be, and we don't really think about the
Speaker 4: continuum we are on when it comes to how cities
Speaker 4: are designed and should be designed. And so when you
Speaker 4: have a rapid kind of jolt to the system and
Speaker 4: there's a reassise of space and the value of space
Speaker 4: in different ways, it's a good time to think about, Hey,
Speaker 4: you know what, maybe we do think about roads as
Speaker 4: belonging to cars, but like if you look at this
Speaker 4: book or look through history, you realize that roads weren't
Speaker 4: about cars. They were it's a pretty recent phenomenon that
Speaker 4: we thought that that's what they should be, and maybe
Speaker 4: it's worth reassessing these things. And I think if there's
Speaker 4: any sort of thesis to the book or to the show,
Speaker 4: it's that the built world and the things we design
Speaker 4: are a window into our values as humans, and they
Speaker 4: always shift and change based on those values, and when
Speaker 4: you have this moment of crisis when it comes to
Speaker 4: the pandemic, it really did change our value of what
Speaker 4: a city was for and who it was for, and
Speaker 4: what was worth giving up and what wasn't worth giving up.
Speaker 4: And you know, as horrible as the situation was, it
Speaker 4: was fascinating to sort of figure out those reassessments and realignments.
Speaker 4: And it's still like, I think some of the stuff
Speaker 4: that we figured out during that period of time, we'll
Speaker 4: still linger with us for a long time, and maybe
Speaker 4: they'll be completely subsumed in different types of you know,
Speaker 4: normal life quote unquote normal life will return different ways.
Speaker 4: But I do think that there's like a sense that, yeah,
Speaker 4: these spaces like we kind of want them back, and
Speaker 4: we're never going to relent. We're going to give them
Speaker 4: back again. And it's a it's a it was fascinating
Speaker 4: to watch happened as we were talking about the book
Speaker 4: so much, and also to see the results of it today.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, the podcast is of course ninety nine
Speaker 1: percent invisible. The book is the ninety nine percent Invisible City.
Speaker 1: Roman Mars, thanks for taking time out of your day
Speaker 1: to chat with me.
Speaker 4: Oh, it was my pleasure. Thank you so much. I
Speaker 4: really enjoyed the show too, so it's real honor to
Speaker 4: be on.
Speaker 1: Thank you all right, Thanks again to Roman Mars for
Speaker 1: taking time out of his busy day to chat with me.
Speaker 1: Here again, the podcast is ninety nine percent Invisible, and
Speaker 1: you can find ninety nine percent Invisible anywhere you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts, obviously, and the book is The ninety nine
Speaker 1: percent Invisible City, which is available in all formats. Like
Speaker 1: I said in the interview, I've got the hard version here,
Speaker 1: the physical copy, and it's just it's really nice, really
Speaker 1: nice design in this so I highly recommend it. As always,
Speaker 1: I want to remind you that Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind is a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 1: and Thursdays. On Mondays we do listener mail, on Wednesdays
Speaker 1: we do a short form artifact or monster fact episode,
Speaker 1: and on Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. That's our
Speaker 1: time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk
Speaker 1: about a weird film. Thanks as always to JJ Possway
Speaker 1: for producing the show, and if you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us, you can email us at contact
Speaker 1: at Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.
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